


no words for heaven or for earth

by fanfoolishness (LoonyLupin), LoonyLupin



Series: Chapter and Verse (Varric Tethras x Min Hawke) [23]
Category: Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Dragon Age Quest: Here Lies the Abyss, F/M, Post-Here Lies the Abyss, Purple Hawke, The Fade
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-08
Updated: 2018-06-03
Packaged: 2019-04-20 01:39:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 20,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14250306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/fanfoolishness, https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/LoonyLupin
Summary: Min Hawke and Varric Tethras knew Adamant Fortress would be dangerous, but perhaps their newfound romance made them more optimistic than they should have been.  Neither expected what lay beyond the abyss -- grief, loss, love, and an aching, desperate hope.  The Fade changes those who set foot in it physically, perhaps permanently.  Will hope be enough to rip open the Fade and mount a rescue mission?Or will all their efforts be for naught?





	1. Where's Hawke?

Adamant was a jumbled mess of flaring magic, the practiced, familiar kick of Bianca against his shoulder, the shouts and sounds of battle. Varric knew they had a job to do: stop the Wardens, kill the demons, kick Corypheus right where it hurt. **  
**

But it was a little hard to remember that when he saw her, red armor a dark silhouette against the swollen desert moons. Min Hawke was a force unto herself, twin daggers flashing in the moonlight, and when he saw her, his heart did all that stupid shit he tried to write about but had never quite captured.

It felt damn good. New, and strange, but  _good._

Bianca loosed a bolt that sent a pride demon to its end. He watched it disintegrate, panting as the battle paused for just a moment. There’d be more demons any second, no doubt, but this was a minute he was going to take.

He drew up himself up in front of her, trying to look casual as he caught his breath.  “Sparrow.”

Min Hawke appeared to be fighting a goofy, full-fledged grin.  A fight she lost spectacularly.  She beamed at him.  “Hallo there, Varric.  Fancy running into my favorite dwarf up here.”

“Oh, you know.  This is textbook for a traditional dwarven courtship.  You’re supposed to slay demons with your beloved in a crumbling Warden fortress in one of the sandiest places in Thedas.  Sand in your junk is romantic, they say.”

Hawke arched an eyebrow at him.  “First, ‘ _beloved_ ’?  I quite like the way that sounds!  That’s delightful, you old softy.  Second, you and I now know very well that sand in one’s junk is hardly romantic.”  Her cheeks went pink and he chuckled at the memory of last night in her tent.  Maybe it hadn’t been romantic, but it had been worth it, anyway.  He took her hand in his and gave it a quick squeeze.

A shout behind them made him drop her hand and reach again for Bianca.  “Suppose it’s time to kick some more demon ass.”

“Don’t worry, love,” she said, and his brain had just a moment to register the  _love_  before she drew her daggers and gutted a lesser shade that had appeared from nowhere.  “I’ve got your back.”

* * *

He  _fell_ , they were all falling, falling –

He gasped for air, braced for the impact, his mind an empty blank –

And he got to his feet, water soaking his boots and the bottom of his trousers.  Where the fuck were they?  “Hawke?” he called uncertainly.  “Doodles?”  He looked around for Namira Lavellan, and spotted her standing a little ways ahead, looking aghast.

“Varric.  There you are,” said Hawke from somewhere above him.  He glanced up and nearly tripped over himself in shock.  Hawke was standing on a rock above him, sticking out horizontally into the air.  She managed to look both scared and annoyed, which somehow made him feel a surge of affection for her.  He blinked, and for the first time fully took in their surroundings.  

Shallow puddles dotted the landscape, which was awash with a sick green light and – his heart sank – floating rocks.  There were only two places he knew of where shit floated like that.  One was the Breach, and Namira had closed that months ago.  The other was the Fade.

He glanced over and saw Solas with his hands on his staff, his face lit up like some kind of gleeful bonfire.  Shit.  Definitely the Fade.

Behind Solas Dorian blinked disbelievingly.  The Warden Alistair popped up from another floating rock, upside down as if it was perfectly natural.  

“Well, shit,” said Hawke, jumping down from her floating rock, and Varric shook his head.

“You said it.”

* * *

The Fade was not going well.  

Varric supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised.  When did the Fade ever go well?  He tried to stay focused on getting out, but he couldn’t help but think of the last time he’d been anywhere Fade-adjacent.  Hawke had been trying to help that kid Feynriel – she’d always had such a soft spot for mages, despite not being one – and Merrill’s Keeper had found a ritual to get their heads into the Fade.  Even his stubborn dwarf mind had wound up there.  

And of course, he’d promptly jumped at the chance to show up Bartrand, to become the favored son of parents who’d been dead for years.  He’d said yes to the demon like a fool and turned on Hawke.  It made him feel ashamed to think about it, so he didn’t usually – but it was hard not to with the Fade’s rotten green light all around him and spirits wafting past.

“How are you?” he muttered to Hawke, the others pushing forward.  He hadn’t wanted to say much in front of the rest of the group.  He still hadn’t told them he and Hawke had finally figured their shit out, and this certainly wasn’t the moment for it.

She brushed a hand against his shoulder, then let it drop as they climbed a set of crumbling stairs lined by floating candles.  “I’m trying not to be frightened.  That’s what the demon wants, isn’t it?”

“That’s what I hear,” he tried to say in a joking tone, but the words fell flat.  He swallowed.  “Hey.  I’m sorry about what happened the last time we were in the Fade.  Also, I hate that there have been multiple times we’ve been in the Fade.”

“I know,” Hawke said.  “You apologized already, Varric.  Years ago.  I’ve never held it against you, of course.”  She managed an anxious smile.  “You have to remember, the Fade responds to your will.  So if you try to think happy thoughts –” her expression looked as if she was trying to be cheery while eating broken glass – “then the Fade can’t be so frightening.”

“Right,” he said.  “I’ll give that a try.”

Of course, he’d no sooner said it than he was put to the test.  The voice of the Nightmare, sonorous, surrounding, rumbled down at them.  It made Varric’s skin crawl.  Especially when it said  _his_  name.

“Once again, Hawke is in danger because of you, Varric,” the voice intoned.  “ _You_  found the red lyrium.   _You_  brought Hawke here.”

Her hand on his shoulder again, gripping it hard this time.  “Don’t listen.”

“Sure,” he muttered.  “Keep talking, Smiley,” he said loudly.  Namira gave him an approving nod, as did Solas and Dorian.

“There’s the spirit,” said Hawke, then laughed at her own terrible pun, wheezing with the effort.  “Sorry, I know that was wretched.”

The Nightmare’s voice shut up, but Varric was sweating.

* * *

Varric swore, flinging a dagger into a dwarf who was so encrusted in red lyrium that it was hard to believe they could move at all.  The dwarf gasped, their red eyes winking out of existence as their body disintegrated.

Varric picked up his dagger and washed it off in a pond of stagnant water, shuddering.  On the whole he’d take Hawke’s spiders instead of these red lyrium mutants any day.  Stupid deepest fears.  He was no stranger to fighting dirty, but this?  This was too much.

“Really not a fan of these fear demons,” he grumbled.  He shook the water off his dagger, and the only color shining in its blade was green, not red.  Well.  That was something, wasn’t it?

* * *

They took a moment to rest up in what appeared to be a tiny cemetery on the water’s edge.  Varric slugged back a potion of elfroot and spindleweed, grimacing at the taste.  He’d never liked the stuff.  

He leaned against one of the tombstones, wiping his mouth and waiting for the potion to kick in.  He felt a little better, a little stronger.  The rift they had come in through swirled above them, baleful but nearer than before.  Maybe they were going to get through this, after all.  He tried to smile at Hawke, but she looked stricken.

“Varric,” she hissed.  “That one’s got your name on it.”

“Riiiiight,” he said, but holy shit, it really did.  

_Varric – Became his parents._

He wondered if a despair demon had snuck up on them, because what else would explain the sudden, icy terror in his gut?  He pushed himself off the tombstone and caught glimpses of names etched on the others.  “Don’t look at them,” he warned.  But Dorian just gave him a twisted smile.  

“Too late,” said Dorian, his eyes shadowed.  “Charming, isn’t it?”

“Ahh, fuck this place,” said Varric.

* * *

_Shit shit shit shit shit_

The Nightmare looked to him a monstrous living mountain of red lyrium, its joints shuddering with every movement.  Its gaping mouth ground a shrieking, scraping howl as it rose above them, a song that shattered in his ears.  Varric scrambled behind Dorian and Solas towards the waiting rift, running up the jagged slope as fast as he could, Bianca banging painfully against his back, his rough breaths sharp in his lungs.  They were almost there – Hawke was just behind him, wasn’t she? – he leapt –

* * *

Namira was white-faced, wide-eyed.  Alistair was hunched over a wound in his side.  The sky beyond them was clear starlight, no Fade, no lyrium dragon, no rift.  They were back in Adamant Fortress.  But –

The world was utterly still.  Except for the icy terror, back again, this time in his gut, his chest, his mouth.  His hands were frozen.  Words tripped out of his mouth, simple ones, the hardest he’d ever said.

“Where’s Hawke?”

Why were they so quiet?  Why did Namira look like she was about to cry?  He tried again.  He hoped, he hoped, he  _hoped_  –

“…Where’s Hawke?”


	2. because you aren't here

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hawke is left to wander the Fade, and Varric finds the real world to be agony.

Footfalls on stone, the taste of blood in her mouth, a voice that she felt more than heard. She scarcely knew what was happening, but the Nightmare had been weakened by the Divine spirit that had helped them, enough for her daggers and her hope to carry her through. The Nightmare`s last cries of death reverberated, shaking the world around her. She ignored it. Ran. Upside down, upside down, running stumbling falling, how her lungs  _seared_! **  
**

Was that a scream? It was  _her_  scream. She whirled, searched desperately for the green, the gate, the escape, she could still catch them, she could still find them, find  _him._

But her feet rang empty on the stone, and there was nothing, nothing beyond herself and the Fade-stone and the pale green sky. No voices. No allies. No Varric. Only a crushing, endless emptiness.

Min Hawke sank to her knees and wept.

* * *

Varric wondered, dully, if tears would help anything.  He’d never gone in much for them in his books.  His protagonists rarely seemed to need them.  They were self-sufficient sorts, even in the romances, and were more likely to kick someone’s ass than reach for a handkerchief.

But this – this  _wound_ , this  _tear_  in the heart of him – fuck.  He’d cry shamelessly if he thought it might help.

He let Curly lead him away down the steps, away from Namira Lavellan, away from the fortress, away from the horror.  He didn’t really know what he was doing.  One foot in front of the other felt foreign and wrong.  

He could see that Cullen had no idea what to do, either.  The man tried. Varric gave him that.

“Varric, I’m – I’m so sorry.”  He stumbled over the words.  Varric barely heard him.  His head throbbed, a pounding ache at the front of his eyes.  Was he sick?  Maybe he was sick.  Maybe he’d imagined this whole thing.  But the smell of the battle was still heavy in the air, and the crickets were loud in the dark.

“But where  _is_  she?” said Varric.  It was the sixth time he’d asked.  Why was he asking again?  He knew the answer, but how could the answer be real?  If it was, then that meant….

“Nami– the Inquisitor is trying to find her, Varric.  If there’s any chance she can open that rift again, perhaps the demon you faced will be gone, and maybe…”  Cullen’s voice faded.  

Varric shook his head irritably.  It felt as if he was moving through oil, or that he’d been packed in cotton.  Every movement was difficult, clumsy.  The words were a great effort.  “And if she can’t?”

“Varric, I don’t know,” he admitted, red-eyed with exhaustion.  “Maker knows I don’t want to think of the possibility, but… if she can’t open that rift again, then I’m afraid Hawke is lost.”

Varric nodded.  Forced a tight smile on his face.  He raised his hands, fingers spread, and gestured jerkily at the other man.  

“Fuck you,” said Varric calmly.  “And fuck your Inquisition.”  He left Cullen behind him and stumbled out into the sands, winding around the back of the ruined fortress, his boots sliding with every step.  Tumbled stone had fallen here and there, centuries of effort toppled with their trebuchets and war machines.  He leaned against a rough boulder, gazing up at the walls of the fortress, at the green sparks visible just above the spires.  Namira was trying to reopen the rift.

The sparks never coalesced.  The rift never opened.  The night sky stretched above him, endless and unbroken save for stars.

He cried, then.  But he’d been right.  

It didn’t help at all.

* * *

Hawke walked, daggers held loosely in her hands.  Was walking the right word for what she was doing?  Sometimes it was clambering over boulders in her path.  Other times it was steeling herself and leaping from floating rock to floating rock.  Sometimes it was tramping through water that rained upward from the ground away into the air.  What else was there to do, after all?

She was tired.  She’d cried a long time after the last hint of the rift had closed.  A long time.  There was no way to know how long; time itself already seemed a foreign thing.

Her side ached with each step, a nagging rawness.  She’d been half-pierced by one of the Nightmare’s claws.  The blood had congealed between her skin and her armor, sticky and slippery as she walked, and she wished she still had some of Anders’ old healing kits.  They had worked wonders for her before.  For others, too.  She remembered Varric bleeding out in a Lowtown alley in the night, and she shivered.

She gritted her teeth and looked out over the green and boiling sky.

The Black City shone foully in the distance, just as Dad and Bethany had always described it.  She squinted at it, daring its edges to sharpen, daring it to be the impossibility her mind told her it was. The spires remained as blurred and vague as ever.  

“Just as well,” she muttered.  “No need to go  _there_.”

“Clever, not to go to the Black City.  Don’t you remember the Chant?  It’s how the hubris of man created the darkspawn,” said Bethany brightly at her side.

“ _Shit_!” Hawke yelped, leaping backwards.  She dislodged a chunk of rock, which floated upward over her head and into the sky.  Bethany stood beside her, tall and healthy and happy, looking like she was about to go out and work the fields of their home in Lothering.  When was the last time Hawke had seen her so happy?  Before Dad died, wasn’t it?

“Language,” said Bethany, grinning.  “What would Mum say?”

“Mum would say  _don’t talk to creepy things in the Fade_ ,” said Hawke stubbornly.  “You’re the mage, anyway, you ought to know that even more than I do.”

“It’s all right to feel a little jealousy, Min.  You can’t help your feelings.  But what I do expect you to help is your actions.  You’ve been teasing Bethany too much lately,” said Dad.  He stood next to Bethany, giving her a fond grin.  “I keep trying to tell you that you are no less gifted for not having magic like your sister –”

“And I keep trying to tell you that daggers mean very little when faced with a lightning storm or a fireball,” said Min drily, though her heart pounded frantically at the sight of Dad, looking hale and strong again.  Her eyes pricked with tears.  He was a tall man, lean and brown, his dark hair cropped close like his beard.  And his eyes – they were  _her_ eyes, incongruously pale blue set in a worn but handsome face.   _Maker_ , she had missed him so these years!  But it wasn’t him.  It couldn’t be.  Divine Justinia had not been herself either, right?  

Hawke shook her head, trying to remember how to breathe past the gnawing ache in her belly.  She couldn’t look at him.  The thing that was pretending to be him.  

“This was how it was in Kirkwall, too; I’ve been in the Fade before,” she bit out.  “You lot are going to offer me a happy reunion with the family, or my own magical abilities, or some other thing I want.  Then you’re going to be one delighted demon and run off with my soul.  Well, I don’t want to play.”

“But magic could help you here,” said Bethany earnestly.  “You might be able to open a rift on your own to escape.  Don’t you want to return home?  We could help you get back.  To Kirkwall.  To Varric.”  She stepped forward, her eyes wide, sympathetic.  “I saw him.  He’s – he’s devastated, Min.  He’s scared to death, he can’t bear to lose you, not like this.”

“I haven’t even had a chance to tell you about the two of us!” Hawke exploded, but her gut roiled, imagining Varric thinking she was – No.  No.   _No_.  

Hawke held onto what she knew was real.  “You couldn’t even know yet.  Everything’s been so desperately busy and I didn’t know how to say it in a letter and – you don’t know any of that, do you, since you aren’t really Bethany.”  She took a deep breath, frightened at how it had only taken a moment for her mind to half-forget that truth.  

She bit her lip, weighing the daggers in her hands.  “I do remember some things Dad taught us.  All of us.”  She sheathed her daggers, staring down the false Dad and Bethany.  It was difficult, but she could start to see around the edges now; there was a light shining through them, glimmering in their eyes.  As she’d insisted, they weren’t human.  The realization was a relief, but a painful one.  “If you’re in the Fade, a demon becomes what you expect it to be.  And if you’re strong enough… you can simply expect it  _not_  to be.  I don’t want to fight you.  So I won’t.  Because you aren’t here.”

And they acquiesced to her – they had no choice – but when they were gone and she was alone on the rocks, looking out to the distant sea, she wondered if she could have the strength to make them leave again.

And again.

And again.

Until she starved, or until she let them win.

* * *

Varric woke up with a start.  He didn’t know what was wrong with him.

Or, well, that wasn’t exactly true.  There was an ache so dark and deep that he couldn’t even look at it except out of the corner of his eye.  It burned with every breath.  He knew about  _that_ , even when denial made him stupid; he knew words like  _grief_  and _loss_  and  _sorrow_ , even when they seemed far too small to contain the pain.

He’d stumbled through the sands with the others, wending their way to Griffon Wing Keep.  He’d kept a wide berth from everyone else.  He didn’t want their apologies, their excuses, their pity.  Namira tried to talk to him twice, but he’d waved her away.  Cullen, bullheaded, had marched next to him for a time, but they remained in silence.  Cole had tried to sidle up beside him, and Varric had flat-out turned and strode off in the other direction.

He needed to be alone.  This shit still didn’t feel  _real_ , and their hovering wouldn’t make it any realer.  He had to sort it out himself.

But there was something else, too, something beyond the disorientation and gut-punches of the grief.  It took him longer than he should to name it.  Then again, it wasn’t something he’d had the chance to practice before.

Solas barely reacted when Varric woke him in the middle of the night in the Keep, a lamp held at his side.  The flames spooled and coiled in the little lamp like a living thing.  The elf was elsewhere one minute and back in the world the next, his eyes glittering in the dim light.

“Varric,” said Solas.  “What is it?”

Varric shook his head, letting out a weary sigh.  “It’s just me.”  He looked blearily down at his boots.  “I gotta talk to you.”

“I will do my best to aid you.”  Even hours before dawn and roused from sleep, the elf was formal beyond reason.  It figured.

“Well, that’s good,” said Varric.  “Because I think I’m having dreams.”


	3. the lonely ruined tower

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In dreams there is a certain symmetry.

Hawke sat on the stairs of a lonely, ruined tower.  She knew the place. This was the grand tower in Ostagar, the Tower of Ishal, the one the Wardens were to send the signal from.  Alistair had told her what happened that day, Loghain turning his back on the King.

She hadn’t known all that at the time.  She had only known the confusing crush of human bodies, the smell of darkspawn, the brave mabari fallen on the battlefield.  She hadn’t been an officer; she’d just been another body, one that would have joined the blooded field if the trampling retreat hadn’t taken her.  Her blades had never felt so small and weak. She’d wished, again, for her father’s magic.

Not that that would have helped anything.

She leaned back, gazing to the top of the tower.  There was no beacon shining, only a broken roof against a jade-swirled sky.

She had never spoken of Ostagar to anyone.  Everything had happened so quickly. She and Carver had both been shaken, too frightened by what they had seen to talk of anything but the little things.  

“There were some glorious dogs there, sister.  It would have been grand to bring home a pup for Molossus to train,” said Carver.

Min had been expecting him ever since she saw the tower, ever since she walked through shifting waves to reach it.  Had she been here moments? Hours? Days? It was hard to say.

“You’re not Carver,” she said, but she kept her eyes averted, only looking at him from the corners.  Her little brother looked the same as he always had, dark hair straight but somehow always tousled, his face set in a perpetual scowl until those rare moments that he grinned.  His voice pierced her heart, and she stifled a gasp at the shock of it.

“You’ve changed, Min.  You don’t care for sparring now?”  She could see his sword at the edge of her vision.  She held up her daggers to parry the thrust, but it hadn’t been a killing blow, only a testing one.  She leapt to her feet, her side aching.

“I told you.  You’re not Carver,” she spat.  “You’re just a demon.”

“This is just like you,” he spat.  “Refusing to let me do my part. You held me back at Ostagar.  I should have  _ been _ there.”

“You’d have died then with the others!” 

“Instead of a week later saving you and Mum and Bethany, you mean?  Yes, a real use of my talents, that,” said Carver. The sword shimmered in his hands.  Claws. Hands. She wasn’t sure which.

“You aren’t Carver,” she said again.  “Carver was an ass sometimes, but he wasn’t this childish.  We used to --”  _ We used to get along,  _ she wanted to say.   _ We used to play when Bethany had her lessons. _  But she couldn’t say that to him.  Couldn’t look in his blue eyes, blue like their father’s, like her own, couldn’t tell him how much she missed him, couldn’t tell him she was so, so sorry she hadn’t been there --

“You aren’t him!” she screamed, and before he could raise his sword she struck, shifting and misdirecting, and drew her daggers across his throat.  

The thing that had pretended to be him slithered out, an insubstantial bit of spirit, and it fell away before she could fully catch its size or shape.  Carver disappeared. Hawke pulled her daggers to her chest, forming a protective  _ X _ across her body, and turned and fled up the stairs.

She only stopped running when she reached a little room in the tower, the one beneath the open the sky.  Papers and daggers and staves hung around her like a constellation. She collapsed to the floor, the papers fluttering and wafting above her, and she wished as hard as she could that she was home.  

Somewhere, she could hear birdsong -- just a few whistled phrases, fading away into the wind.  “Chaffinch,” she murmured. She closed her eyes, trying to remember a world of sunlight and open air, a world where a little bird could dance in the branches of a Lothering farm.  

“Help,” she whispered, but the chaffinch answered not, and the wind was quiet.  She looked at her hands. A quill appeared in her left hand, and she stared at it, her chest aching.  It was the beautiful golden eagle quill Varric had given her years back, when she first moved into the Amell estate.  He’d called it fit for a noble, and though she’d snorted at the idea, she had had to admit he was right.

Ink.  She needed ink.  Red ink appeared beside her, and she ripped one of the vellum pages out of the air, setting it down and beginning to write.

 

* * *

 

The first dream, he mistook for memory.  There was that unnatural Fade-light, green and pale and wrong; stones floating far into the sky, the constant drip of water in the background.  A candle burning at a writing desk, and quills scattered on the rocks below. Papers fluttered, suspended in the air as if on a wire, never falling to the ground.  And somewhere far off, somewhere farther than the moon, he heard a scream.

He hadn’t realized he was sleeping.  He’d been fighting off flashes of memory all day, his brain spinning to try and accept it.   _ Where’s Hawke _ ? he asked again and again, an idiot who hadn’t yet realized his world was broken.  He’d never hated the sound of his own voice more.

So when he saw the Fade again, he’d thought it just another flashback, one more attempt to understand the entirety of what had happened.

The second dream, he wasn’t so sure.  He walked along stone paths, and wisps and spirit-things floated nearby, lost in their own thoughts and desires.  Sometimes he thought he knew them, but that didn’t make any sense. They didn’t seem to notice him, even when he accidentally walked right through one.

He climbed stairs to half-built towers overlooking a green and endless sea.  It reminded him of what Namira had told him about Redcliffe in the future. He looked carefully for signs of red lyrium, but found none.

He climbed to the top of one of the towers, and found another writing desk beneath an open sky.  Like before, parchment hung, mysteriously suspended in the air around him. He reached out and took one of the pages.  The red ink slid around, dancing and speckling the paper as he watched. 

A sound behind him startled him. Was that a bird?  He whirled, but found nothing there.

The paper vanished in his hands, and he realized that there was no stone around him; there were only the walls of his tent, travel-stained and sand-encrusted.  Varric lay there in the dark, disquieted.

 

* * *

 

The third dream was when he knew.  

He took the stone steps two at a time, his legs somehow long enough or the stairs somehow short enough for it to be possible.  The little wisps danced around him, and he flew past them, determined to get the hell out of the Fade.

He’d spent more time in the Fade than any dwarf had a right to.  First the debacle with Hawke in Kirkwall, when he’d shamefully given the demon everything it wanted just so he could be the favored brother.  That would have been bad enough if not for actually stepping foot in the blasted place like some Tevinter magister. And of course, that was when they left her --

He rubbed at his face, and the water he dashed from his eyes hovered behind him, refusing to fall.  

The tower climbed up and up.  He found surprises on the way, cunning traps laid into the stonework of the steps.  He managed to sidestep them. Something about them seemed familiar.

The writing desk was still there when he reached the top.  He reached for the first parchment, smoothing it carefully.  The scarlet ink began to shimmer, but before it melted off of the paper, he recognized a familiar left-handed slant.  _  My name is Hawke, and I am trapped.   _

Varric tried to tuck the paper inside his shirt, but when he looked at his hand the paper was nowhere to be seen.  He glanced up and saw it a hundred feet away, hovering over nothingness. He let out a string of profanity, and halfway through  _ fucking shit weirdass Fade _ he woke up.  

_ He woke up. _

 

* * *

 

“I have never heard of anything like it,” said Solas quietly after Varric finished his tale.  “The children of the Stone dream not, and never have.”

“If that’s what dreams are normally like,” said Varric, “I don’t think dwarves are missing much.  How do I make it stop?”

Solas stood, conjuring a blue shimmer in the palm of his hand.  He carefully held it out, then with a flick of his fingers, the blue shimmer coalesced around Varric into a hazy curtain.  

Varric twitched irritably.  If it was a barrier, it felt different than the kinds he’d been used to with other mages, or even the sort Solas himself usually cast.  This one was uncomfortable, sparking and fizzing off his skin, even though the blue light looked static.

“So is this a… a de-dreaming spell?” 

“No,” said Solas.  “I am attempting to determine the source of your dreams.  It should not be possible. ...then again, it should not have been possible to enter the Fade in the flesh.”

“So?  We do impossible shit every day.  What makes this different?”

The blue light sputtered, then faded.  Solas looked impressed. “You are Fade-touched, Varric.”

“And what does that mean?”  He thought back to some of the weird shit Lavellan had been telling him about, giant spiders that got that way because of their contact with the Fade.  “Please don’t tell me I’m going to turn into a bigass spider.”

Solas chuckled.  “Nothing of the sort.  It appears to be a temporary effect of your time in the Fade.  As Dorian, the Inquisitor, and myself were already mages, it seems we did not sustain any additional effects from our time there.  For now, though, you maintain a connection to the Fade similar to what a mage possesses. You can walk consciously in the Fade while you sleep.”

Varric stared down at his hands, wondering if fire was about to sprout out of him.  That would be the  _ last _ thing he needed right now.  “But I can’t --”

“Work magic, no,” said Solas.  “I sense no ability to control mana or manipulate the elements.  At this moment, you read to me the way a mage child does; the potential is there, but not the power.  I suspect the connection will fade with time, but how long it will take, I cannot yet estimate. ” 

“Still fucked up.”

“I agree,” said Solas, and for a moment, Varric could swear the elf winked.  

Varric hesitated.  He hadn’t told Solas what he read in the last dream.  He took a breath. Remembered the blood on her face, the determination in her eyes, the way she’d kissed him before pushing him into the rift--  

“Look, Solas, I…  _ dreamed _ … that she was trying to send a message.  She wrote that she needed help. That she was trapped.”  He looked at the lamplight, soothing yellow flame dancing in its cage.  “Is there a chance? Any chance at all that it’s her?”

Solas turned aside, holding his hands behind his back.  Varric recognized the start of a lie when he saw one, and raised his hand.  “Don’t do that, Chuckles. Just be honest. I can handle it.”

Solas’ mouth was a thin, faintly approving line.  “You are most insightful, friend.” He shook his head.  “It is almost certainly a spirit, playing off of your desires.  They will do everything in their power to reshape the Fade to your wishes.  Including impersonating your friend.”

_ She was more than a friend. _ _ She  _ **_is_ ** _ more. _  “But we were all physically there,” said Varric carefully.  “Which means this isn’t necessarily business as usual.”

Solas’ face was calm; calm and somehow sad.  Varric couldn’t say what had changed. Something in the eyes, maybe.  “There is a faint chance that Hawke survived the Nightmare, yes. If that were true, despite her lack of magic, perhaps she would have been affected enough to exert her will on the Fade around her.  And... perhaps you would be able to perceive some of those effects in dreams.” He gave Varric a warning look. “Yet she would have to battle spirits drawn to the fight, as well as survive in a realm where nothing can sustain the physical form for long.  Even if she still lives, the possibility of opening a rift again in the exact place she is in is nigh impossible. The Inquisitor has already tried, if you recall.”

Namira Lavellan  _ had _ tried.  Tried for hours, in fact, tears streaming down her pale face.  Kept trying, while around her, Wardens dispersed and Inquisition soldiers began to dispose of the dead.  Kept trying until the sun fell, her hand sparking green in the dark, until Cullen and Solas and Dorian said things to her and led her away with her head bowed.  Varric hadn’t been able to make out their words. He’d been too busy slumping against a stone battlement with his hands limp and nerveless beside him, trying to remember how to breathe.

Varric ran a trembling hand through his hair.  “Sure. I recall.” 

“I am sorry, Varric.”

He shrugged.  “Pleasant dreams, Solas.”

 

* * *

 

The stone stairs wound far, far into the sky, much higher than he had ever climbed before.  He kept climbing, never flagging, never wavering. He only stopped to undo her traps. He was certain now that they were hers; every rogue had a style all their own, and he remembered teaching her in the Hanged Man after too many drinks.  How long ago was it? Six years? Seven? Even then, he’d been a fool for her, savoring her smiles far more than he should have. 

He reset each trap after he moved past them.  Her work had always been clever. He hoped it would be enough.

“Min!” he called, cupping his hands around his mouth.  How’d it work here, again? You used your will, right? “Hawke!”  And he  _ willed _ his voice to be a beacon, willed it far over the endless green sea, willed it through the yellow-green sky.

Did it work?  He wasn’t sure.  He kept climbing.  

The tower room was different.  Daggers were laid out on the floor, shifting position and size as he watched them.  There were tapestries hung on the wall, their ragged edges fluttering. Their sigils wavered, their designs crawling up the cloth and sliding off of them into nothingness, but he was certain he was able to make them out for a moment.  The old Amell crest. 

The writing desk floated in the center of the room, bobbing lazily up and down.  Varric reached into his pocket.  _ It’s about will. _  He pulled out a fountain pen that felt real as real, and began to write.  

_ Sparrow, I’m not giving up.  I’m going to find you. _

 

* * *

 

 

The message ravens were burdened that day.  One of them glared at the dwarf with the reddened eyes, pecking at his hand as he tried to fix a letter to her leg.  She’d already seen him weigh down several of her kin with letters.

“Oh, come on,” he muttered.  The raven relented, finally holding still.  Once the letter was attached, she took to her wings, her mind suddenly sharp and focused.  She knew where to fly and what to do, and she soared high on the desert wind, and the dwarf watched her go.


	4. what's real, anyway?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Fade grows more mysterious, not less, with time; both Hawke and Varric struggle to understand it.

Varric sat in his tent, set up in a sheltered area of the ramparts of Griffon Wing Keep.  Here the daytime sun was not quite so fierce, and the night winds were broken by the sand-worn stone.  The dawn would be coming soon, but despite trying, he could not fall asleep again.

_Just one more dream,_  he thought, and then cracked a smile in the dim predawn.  What a fucking  _weird_  thing for a dwarf to think.

He sat up, groaning, and fumbled for the small thieves’ lantern he’d kept at the front of the tent.  He rummaged in the half-dark for his firesteel and lit the lantern, its small glow enough to illuminate his tent.  Bianca lay at the ready at the front of the tent; jumbled to the side were his clothes and armor.  Closest to him lay Hawke’s things.

He didn’t know who had packed up her belongings from their camp near Adamant and carried them to the Keep; didn’t know who had bundled them neatly in his tent after setting it up for him.  He didn’t remember very much after he fell out of the Fade and Hawke didn’t.  

He suspected it might have been Cole.  Possibly it was Cullen.  A matter of Fereldan respect for the fallen, maybe.  His stomach clenched.

Varric reached out to touch her pack; soft supple leather and travel-stained cloth, its top slipping open to reveal a rogue’s delight.  Spare daggers, a kit of poisons, raw wire and steel for traps.  And folded beside them a red scarf trimmed in gold thread, its weave warm enough for Skyhold.  

The scarf.  He remembered giving it to her a few winters back, after Kirkwall had a rare snow.  He’d been the cold one – she enjoyed the snow, as it reminded her of Lothering – but he’d seen the scarf in a stall in Hightown and thought she might use it.  Really, that was all he’d meant by it.  

She’d thanked him and given him a strange look.  She only wore it a handful of times in Kirkwall; it just didn’t get cold enough.  

In those few short weeks they had in Skyhold, she wore it every day.  

He took the scarf in his hands, raised it to his face, took a long breath.  It smelled like the soap she used, cinnamon and peppery spindleweed.  It smelled like  _her_.

 

* * *

 

Varric waited for the Inquisitor, kicking his feet idly against the stone ledge on which he sat.  The desert sun was fierce even this early in the morning, and he wiped the sweat from his brow.

“Varric,” said Namira, sitting down beside him.  Her voice was careful.  Controlled.  She’d probably practiced this conversation.  She was awfully tenderhearted for some of the shit she’d seen, he knew that much.  Her question to him was simple.  “How are you?”

They hadn’t yet had a chance to speak since Adamant.  Well, that wasn’t exactly true.  She’d tried and he’d pushed her away every time.  He blamed her and he didn’t, and both truths were too difficult to face.  But he needed her help.  

Varric shrugged.  “I could lie,” he offered.  “Might make us both feel better.  I hear that I’m very good at it.”

She put a hand on his shoulder, then looked hard at him, her eyes watering. The control was gone, collapsed in an instant.  “It’s my fault,” she said quietly.  “She – she said she should stay behind to fight the Nightmare.  It was blocking our path to the rift.  She said Corypheus was her responsibility, that Alistair should rebuild the Wardens.”

Varric closed his eyes.  Damn but if he couldn’t imagine her saying it.  He could hear her voice, steeled, determined.  Ready to do the Right Thing.  Again.

Why had he called for her?  Why had he brought her here?  She’d already given so much, so  _damn_  much, for a world that would never afford her the same courtesy.  The Nightmare’s voice thundered in his head.   _Once again, Hawke is in danger because of you._

“Nah.  It’s my fault.  I should never have dragged her here.”  He let out a shuddering breath and opened his eyes, looking anywhere but at Namira.

“But I’m the one who told her  _yes_ ,” she said.  She pulled her hand off his shoulder, gazing into the sunsoaked morning.  “Do you want to know what she said?”

“Yes.”  Then he thought about it.  “No.”  Another shuddering breath.  “Yes.”

“She said, ‘say goodbye to Varric for me.’”

It was hard to breathe.  He tried.  He knew it was something he had to do.  He closed his eyes again, worked at it, tried to bring the desert air through his nose and mouth into his lungs, tried to remember how to make his heart beat.  It sort of worked.  “Fuck, Doodles.”

“I’m so sorry,” she said miserably.

He scrubbed at his face with a gloved hand.  The leather came away dotted with moisture.  Sweat?  Tears?  Hard to tell.  He gritted his teeth.  “Have you talked to Solas?”

“Not yet,” said Namira.  She searched his face.  She had circles under her eyes.  Inquisitor wasn’t a role he would have pushed on anyone.  But if he’d just told them where Hawke was in the beginning, maybe  _she’d_  be Inquisitor now, maybe she wouldn’t be in the Fade –

He shoved the thought aside, banishing it with a strong wave of denial.  Thinking like that was bound to fuck you up.  He couldn’t afford to do that right now.

“Well,” he huffed, his voice cracking, “I think Hawke’s alive.  And before you tell me it’s impossible, you know what else is impossible?  A dwarf having dreams.”  He pointed at himself with his thumb straight out, fingers loosely curled.  “Solas confirmed it.  Apparently I am now a Fade-touched dwarf.  So.  That’s exciting.”

Namira stared at him, her mouth slightly falling open.  “You’ve been dreaming?”

“It’s weird as shit, but I’ve been walking in the Fade,” said Varric.  “Where we – where we lost her.  And I think she’s still there.”  He felt almost brave, laying it out for her.  “I’ve already got Solas looking for her when he takes his twenty winks, but he doesn’t know her – I don’t think he’ll find her, not like maybe I could.  I’ve sent out letters on the fastest birds to our friends in Kirkwall; maybe they can help guide her, protect her.  But if we do find her, she’s still going to need a way out.”  He eyed Namira’s left hand, the sizzling green light faint under the bleaching sun.  “If there’s a chance… any kind of chance at all… will you help us?”

Namira reached out, laid her hands on his arms, and leaned forward.  “ _Yes_ ,” she said fiercely, and he remembered how to breathe again.

 

* * *

 

The discussion raged for hours.  Namira insisted on bringing in the other mages, and they sequestered themselves in one of the Keep’s back rooms, the stone walls not enough to cool the stifling air.

The mages fought amongst themselves.  Varric sat at the end of the table, letting them talk; the only thing he fought back was a yawn after hours of deliberation.  He wavered in his seat, holding back his exhaustion.

“It simply shouldn’t be possible,” said Solas.  “A mortal left alive in the Fade – it defies explanation.”

“There are two precedents,” said Vivienne.  “The Tevinter magisters of old –”

“And me,” said Namira.  “I do still seem to be alive.”

“Three precedents,” corrected Dorian.  “After all, Solas, Varric, the Warden and myself all walked in the Fade without perishing.”

“Hawke was brought in the same way we were, so the Fade itself may not be fatal to her.  If she doesn’t attempt to get to the Black City –”

“She wouldn’t,” said Varric, rubbing his eyes.  This was the sixth time they’d had this conversation, or so it felt like.  “Her dad was a mage, her sister too.  She knows the risks.”

“I would not have thought she could survive the Nightmare,” said Solas.  “But perhaps it was more weakened by the Divine’s spirit than we believed.”  

“What Varric describes is an unusual level of clarity in a dream, even for a mage,” said Dorian.  “The clues he has seen… it could be her.”

“Let us assume that it is her, and not a scion of the Nightmare, or a similar spirit,” said Solas.  “I walked Adamant in the Fade for hours last night, and found no whispers of a demon holding that remnant of the Fade.  The spirits are quiet.  Perhaps it is because there is a mortal among them.”

“That’s rather a large assumption to make, my dear,” said Vivienne.  “But I do acknowledge we tread here in lands uncharted.”  

Namira ran a hand across her lips thoughtfully.  “There was water in the Fade.  She could survive for weeks without food, if need be,” she said.  “Supposing she needs it there, that is.  Do any of you recall feeling hungry?  Thirsty?  Any physical needs?  Who knows how time moves there?”

“What’s real, anyway?” Varric murmured, but they ignored him as if he hadn’t spoken at all.

“I am not certain of the nature of time in the physical Fade,” said Solas, looking disquieted.

“I asked Cullen,” said Namira.  “They thought we were gone for less than an hour.  But I thought we were there for longer, nearly a full day.”

“Even if time is flexible within the Fade –”

Varric yawned.  Mages.  They always had something to say.  He supposed he couldn’t exactly fault them that.  This was some pretty weird magical shit, after all.  He rested his chin in his hand, blinking slowly.  The light was so dim in here, just a few small candles and an oil lamp at the other end of the table.

“Do you recall sensing any temporal distortion?” Vivienne asked Dorian.  “After all, you do have additional training in time magic.”

“Things did move differently there,” began Dorian.  But Varric’s eyes fell closed.  He’d have to catch up with what Dorian was saying later.

 

* * *

 

Hawke peered warily out of the tower window, watching for any signs of movement below. The rocks shifted as they always did here, but she saw no signs of spiders, shades, or demons scurrying on the stairs. Good.

The lack of demons had been surprising at first, but she had plenty of time to think about it, didn’t she? The Nightmare had been such an all-consuming force in this part of the Fade, according to the elf Solas, and when it crumpled, or vanished, or retreated, it must have left a vacuum behind.

She had been less troubled by creatures than she would have expected.  Still, though, once she found the Tower of Ishal, she had gratefully taken it as a place to shelter.  The longer she stayed, the more constant it became, as if it was trying to change itself to suit her.  Amell banners fluttered at the walls, a tiny memory of home.

She thought back to Dad’s lessons, mostly for Bethany, but she had often listened in as well.   _Memories shape the Fade just as surely as our hands shape the world this side of the Veil.  In the great places, where history has been changed or many lives have been taken, the Fade forms itself in response to the memories left behind._  But maybe her memories shaped it, too.

She hadn’t seen many creatures, but she had seen many wisps, hints of people dreaming who stalked the stairs of the tower.  One of them had reminded her of Warden Alistair, but she couldn’t say why; just something about the way it hummed to itself as it passed, oblivious to her presence.  It made her feel less lonely, for a moment.

It also reminded her to continue to keep her wits about her.  She wasn’t sure what traps would do to creatures of spirit, but she figured it wouldn’t hurt to find out.  It gave her something to focus on, anyway, besides that storm of howling terror waiting for her in the back of her mind.   _You are lost, lost forever, no one will ever see you again, you’re going to die here –_  It was quite the unpleasant litany.  

So she tried to ignore it.  She pooled all of her trap supplies from the pouches on her belt, bits of metal and flint, wire and string, and she worked.  

Her efforts reminded her of Kirkwall.  She’d been decent with dueling and daggers when she arrived, years of practicing behind the barn sparring with Carver an aid.  He’d had so much strength she’d put her energy into evading, dodging, ducking.  But she’d been hopeless at some of the other aspects of roguery when she came to Kirkwall.  It had been Varric and Isabela who had taught her, somewhat patiently, but mostly with an enormous degree of teasing, how to be truly clever.

She fought back tears, thinking of Varric’s sturdy hands on hers.  She remembered being impressed by how nimble his wide fingers were, showing her how to jigger a lock or how to thread a tripwire just right.  She’d been surprised by how sure his touch was.  He could be unexpectedly serious when he was concentrating.

“You fool,” she said into the empty, echoing Fade.  “You rather liked him from the start, didn’t you?  What would Mum say about an Amell and a dwarf?”  She laughed, finishing up her trap, and turned to head back through the door into the tower room.  

Only it wasn’t the tower any longer; it was their home in Lothering.  And she was not alone.

Mum was pale and wan before her, her eyes as dull as they had been in that terrible foundry.  Hawke scrabbled for her daggers, suddenly gasping for air.  “No,” she said weakly.  “Mum.  Please.  Don’t make me look at you, not like this.  I’m so sorry.”

“It’s all right,” Mum said, her voice soft but strained.  She reached out, her hand jerky, twitching. “I forgive you, Min, sweet girl.  It wasn’t your fault.”

Hawke’s hands shook on the hilts of her daggers.  “Just stop,” she begged.  But she missed her mother, too, wished she could take her hand, meet her in an embrace. Leandra had been such a beautiful woman.  Her flat, scarred eyes blinked in her ruined face, one after the other.

“Please don’t worry, my love.  I’m with your father again.  And Carver.”  They appeared behind her, their faces ghostly pale, their eyes hollow.  “We miss you and your sister.  Please, my Min.  Come with us.”

“We miss you,” echoed her father.

“I miss you,” said Carver.  “Honest, sister.  Even  _I_  miss you.”  He hitched a grin on his face, where it looked wrong, somehow; too wide, the teeth too even.  But she stared at them, fighting back false hope.  It was so hard.  

If she tilted her head, if she squinted, they didn’t look so pale; didn’t look so strange.  The color came back to Carver’s face.  Mum’s eyes looked clear.  Dad smiled, crows’ feet creasing at the corners of his eyes.

They didn’t look strange at all.  They just looked like her family.

“I’ve missed you all so much.”  They smiled, and she stepped closer.

 

* * *

 

He was back in Kirkwall.  He’d missed the shithole more than he’d let on, though if he was honest, he suspected a discerning listener just maybe might have picked up on it over the past few months.  He suddenly remembered all the times in the Inquisition he’d constantly mentioned Hawke and their friends, their adventures in the Hanged Man, stories from around the city, and he had to laugh.  It was obvious now.  

He’d been fucking homesick.  For Kirkwall!

Sure, it was good to be back, even if Lowtown was surprisingly empty this time of night.  Was it night, or was it a strange, shifting twilight?  The rebuilding was proceeding differently from how he had remembered.  He didn’t remember doorways opening from the second floor of some of the houses, for example, or windows set in the cobblestone ground.  He shrugged.  Maybe this would withstand an explosion a little better.

_Streets soaked in blood, beggars with their throats ripped out, the roar of the abomination shattering the windows, a red sun, a fell sun –_

No.   _No_ , that wasn’t all Kirkwall was.  He tried to remember better times.  Happier times.   _It’s a shithole, but it’s our shithole!_  He tried to forget the backs of Hawke and Anders, leaving the city; tried to forget the smell of smoke, the hum of the lyrium shimmering from what had once been the Knight-Commander.

He shook his head, mouth narrowing in a hard line, and kept walking until he saw something better than old, dark memories.  The Hanged Man.  

Varric squinted up at the wooden man hanging from the roof; it looked different.  Smaller.  Sleeker.  It hadn’t been painted in gold and red before, either.

His hands curled into fists.  “Min?” he called hoarsely.  The wooden figure shimmered, then disappeared.  “Right,” he said.  “Okay, that seems normal.”

He shoved open the door and stepped inside.  The chairs were stacked on all the tables except one.  Hawke sat at the table, studying a mug of ale.

“Varric,” she said warmly.  “I’ve been waiting for you.”

He pulled up the chair beside her, put his hand on hers.  “Min.  Do you know how good it is to see you?” he asked.  “I – I’ve missed you.”

She grinned, winking at him, leaning into his touch.  “But I’ve been here the whole time.  Where have you been, you foolish dwarf?  It’s not like you to leave Kirkwall behind.”

Varric looked at her, feeling a little confused.  Hadn’t she been the one who left?  Or – no, maybe he had it backwards.  It was hard to say.  He busied himself with watching two pints of ale appear, disappear, reappear on the table.  

He was here for something.  He tried to remember.  His next book was due, wasn’t it?  Damn publishers on his back.  With his free hand he tried to reach into his pocket for his pen and journal.  Something about them seemed important.  

“Something distracting you, love?” she asked, her expression sunny.  “Aren’t you glad to see me?”

“Of course,” said Varric.  “But I was supposed to do something.”

Hawke nodded, suddenly serious.  “I see.  You’ll do what you must, I suppose.”

Varric pulled out the journal and pen, and hesitantly pulled his hand away from hers.  “I’ll just be a moment,” he explained.  He gazed at the blank paper and set the pen to it.  But the words wouldn’t come.  “I don’t understand,” he said.  He closed his eyes, tried to remember.  The memory hit him like a blast.  

“I’ve with the Inquisition.  Corypheus – he’s back.  I’m doing the noble thing and trying to stop the bastard.”  He gasped, remembering.  “We have to get you out of here!”

Her smile faded.  “I can’t leave, Varric.”  Her mouth quirked to one side, her lip trembling.  

He tried to write something; he wasn’t sure what.  He ripped the paper out of the book and let it float away, setting down his pen and turning to her.  He took her hands in his.  They were softer than he remembered, without the callouses he’d grown used to.

“Why can’t you leave?”

But she just stared into her drink, letting go of his hands.  Tears shone in her eyes. “You were too late,” she whispered.


	5. the birds in the hedgerows

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Min and Varric find help in unexpected places.

“Varric?  Varric?”

He jerked back to himself with a gasp, shaking.  “I saw her,” he said wildly.  “I saw her – but she said – she said –”

“It’s all right, Varric,” said Namira, edging closer to him. “Take a moment.  Breathe.”

He looked around.  The other mages stared at him as if he’d lost his mind, but shit, maybe he had.  This was what humans and elves had to deal with all the fucking time?  He took several deep breaths through his mouth, shoulders rising and falling with each breath, but he couldn’t make that fearful despair fully vanish.

“What did you see?” asked Vivienne cautiously.

Varric rubbed his face, grimacing.  “I was in Kirkwall.  I saw her in the Hanged Man, where we used to meet.  I told her we had to get her out of there.  She said –”  He managed the words, but they came out small and cracked.  “She said it was too late.  That _I_ was too late.  Shit.”

“No,” said Namira.  “That can’t be true.  If she had died, how would she speak to you?”

“The Divine was not the Divine, and yet she was,” said Dorian.  “Perhaps a similar spirit thought itself to be her.”

“Or perhaps a demon was attempting to affect your mind,” said Vivienne.

“I don’t know,” said Varric miserably.  “But this… dream… was harder to navigate than the others were.  I kept forgetting I was dreaming.  Does that make sense?”

Solas exchanged meaningful glances with the other mages, then held out his hand, a blue shimmer coalescing.  

“You could  _ask_  first,” said Varric as the magic settled over him.  He winced as it sparked around him, through him, then dissipated.

Solas’ mouth was a thin line.  “The presence of the Fade is weaker now,” he said.  “Your connection to it is waning.  Your ability to walk clearly in the Fade as a mage does diminishes.”

“What?  No.  We need more time. If she’s still out there, we have to figure out how to find her.  I have to figure it out,” groaned Varric.

“Then we have even more reason to move forward as quickly as possible,” said Namira.  “You were in a pub in Kirkwall?  Does she know the place well?”

Varric laughed despite himself.  “You still haven’t read  _Tale of the Champion_?”

“I’ve been a little busy,” she said, only a little defensively.  “I’ll get to it, I promise!  But right now I’ve got other things on my mind, haven’t I?”

Varric nodded.  “All right, all right.  Yeah, she knows it.  It might have been more home to her than her home in Kirkwall was.”

“And you know it well?”

“I _live_  there, Doodles.”

She blushed.  It would have been funnier if he hadn’t had panic clawing at his mind.  

Hawke’s face had been so…  _defeated_.  Was it her?  Or some kind of trick?  He tried to remember, but the details were going fuzzy.

“Then that’s where it will have to be,” she said.  “Your friends in Kirkwall, they’re mages?  Send them another letter and let them know that I think I’ve got a plan.  If Hawke’s still there, it just might work.”

“And if she’s… gone?”

Namira swallowed.  “Then we fight whatever comes out of that rift, and I close it as soon as I can.  But at least – at least we’ll have done everything we can.”

Varric nodded mechanically, looking down at his hands.  It had felt so real, holding her hand.  His fingers curled and uncurled, remembering.  

Real.  It sure wasn’t what it used to be.

 

* * *

 

Varric paced in the desert twilight, his steps jerky, his fists clenched at his sides.  He wished he felt anything like tired.

He’d asked Namira for something to make him sleep so that he could get back into the Fade.  She and Solas had both been hesitant.  Sure, there was shit that could knock him out.  But it might knock him out so deeply he didn’t visit the Fade at all.  He wished he knew what Keeper Marethari had used back in Kirkwall to get them into the Fade; Namira wasn’t familiar with it.

 _Just go to sleep._   It shouldn’t be so hard.  

The sand slipped under his boots, a shower of the constantly-shifting, and he slipped-stepped-slid through it, the sun’s warmth still palpable through his soles.  He dared the sun to fall below the horizon faster.  Maybe then he’d find a bit of sleep.  Maybe then, he’d find another chance to try and get through to her.

There was a shadow stretching over the sand ahead of him, a shadow far too lean and tall for his own.  And the hat –

Varric sighed.  “What do you want, kid?”

“It isn’t like the stories,” said Cole quietly.  “The details are so small.  A few black hairs caught in the weave of her red scarf.”

“Kid…”

“Sand scrapes on your knees, rough, raw, real.  From when it felt like she was yours.  They still sting.”

“Kid, would you please –”

“Letters written in her hand.  She wanted you to send them after the battle.  Bethany should hear some good news for once.”

“Cole,” said Varric sharply.  “That isn’t – helping.”

Cole nodded, drawing himself up to his full height; he bowed his head, ghostly pale beneath the large hat.  “I know,” he says, “but it helps you to say it doesn’t help.”

Varric stared up at the kid for a minute.  Then he laughed, a brittle sound.  “You’re something else, kid.”

“I’m a spirit,” said Cole helpfully.  “Not a something.”

“Right, right,” said Varric. He watched the sun sink, achingly, beyond the horizon.  “Can you tell if she’s there?” he asked quietly. “Is it really her?”

Cole fell silent, his hands hanging awkwardly at his side.  “It’s… hard to see, this side of the Veil,” he said.  “Her traps on the tower stairs.  Her banners waving, even in the emptiness.  You believe she’s there.”  He knelt down in front of Varric and smiled, the effect somehow both disconcerting and kind.  He reached out a pale hand.  “Sleep,” he said.

“What?” asked Varric, and then his legs buckled.  The sand was soft.

“Sleep,” said Cole, and Varric had only a vague memory of Cole lifting him before he passed into darkness.

 

* * *

 

Min Hawke rubbed her eyes with her hands, disbelieving.  “I never thought I’d see you again,” she said happily.

Mum and Dad just laughed, sitting out on the fallen log behind their home in Lothering.  The fields spread out around them, lush and full, ready for harvest.  She could just make out Bethany and Carver laughing and chasing each other in the distance.

“I feel like I’ve woken from some kind of nightmare,” said Hawke.  Molossus drowsed at their feet, content and snoring.  His ear twitched.

“You’ve been away from home for some time,” said Dad.  He reached out and stroked her cheek with the back of a gnarled hand.  “We’ve missed you, Min.”

“Look at the twins,” said Mum.  “They’re so happy to see you.  Where would they be without their big sister?”

She opened her mouth to speak, but suddenly a disturbing flash of memory leapt into her mind.  Carver, grey on the dirt parth; Bethany, coughing in a hall of stone.  She shook her head.  Far away, she thought she heard a tapping sound that seemed familiar, but she wasn’t certain.

“Without me there’d be no one to keep them in line, and we couldn’t have that, could we?” she asked, moving her mouth into a smile.  She watched the twins sparring in the field, Bethany’s fireballs being dodged by Carver, Carver’s blade catching the fire’s glow.  The flame looked strangely greenish in the reflection.  

“Especially since you’ve already failed them before,” said Mum absently.  The tapping sound was a little easier to hear now.

“I know, I – what?” said Hawke.  

Dad nodded, his broad, easy smile handsome as ever.  “Your mother, too,” he said, chuckling.  “It was terrible what he did to her, isn’t it?”

“Stop it,” said Hawke in confusion.  She looked down at her hands, trembling.  For a moment they were bloody, but then they were clean again.  Molossus looked at her expectantly, fresh blood on his mouth.  He panted silently.  The tapping was closer than ever, slow, steady, wood on stone.

“You can’t go back,” said Bethany.  She was pale at Hawke’s arm, dark shadows under her eyes, her Grey Warden armor dull in the greenish sunlight.  When had she come in from the field?  “That’s why you have to stay.  To make up for everything.”

The field shifted, changed.  Kirkwall smoked in the distance, fire in the far districts, the smell of smoke on the air.  Mum’s hands were tight on Hawke’s shoulders, painful even, sharp-tipped fingernails digging into her skin.  Carver looked up from where he had been petting the dog, his head at a funny angle to his neck.  

“You can never go back to Kirkwall,” said Carver.  “Fancy you as a Champion!  Meant to keep your city safe.  Ha!”

The tapping thundered in her ears.   _Tap.  Tap.  Tap._  “It wasn’t supposed to end this way!” she cried, her voice ringing through the fields, through the city streets.  Tap.

Her family was quiet and gray in the distance.  Molossus cringed at her feet.  Anders brought his staff down against the stone ground.   _Tap.  Tap.  Tap._

Hawke looked at him, her heart breaking again.  “Why didn’t you trust me?” she asked.  

He smiled ruefully.  “You did not trust me, either.”

The truth of it hurt, an old agony.  “But maybe there was another way!  Maybe the two of us together –”

Anders let his staff fall to the ground, his mouth twisting.  He knelt before her, and she remembered a blade in her hand, his back defenseless, bowed.  “Am I more than the cause for mages?” he asked.

“You were mine, once,” she said quietly, stroking his hair.  He closed his eyes against her touch.

He took his hand in hers, and kissed it.  “Could we start again, love?  Could we fight for what is right, together?”  He gazed at her, his hazel eyes gentle.  But behind them was only darkness –

And then, sweet and lilting in her ear, the song of birds.  Hawke shook her head.  The birdsong was clean, incisive, fresh.  “Chaffinch,” she said.  “Robin.”  She pulled her hand away from Anders and listened, watching the birds overhead.  They were coming nearer.  “Blackcap.  Chiffchaff, skylark, songthrush!”  She got to her feet, leaving Anders behind her, running to follow the birds.

“No!” Anders screamed, and she chanced a glance at him as she ran; he was a terrible creature of shifting rags and a howling empty face, remorse emanating from him in a cruel wave.  

The birds sang, brilliant and glorious, clustering on a beautiful hedgerow blooming red.  The hedgerow funneled into a path, the walls growing taller, the plants closing in behind her.  The Anders-thing screamed behind her, but his voice was dim, muffled by the glossy green plants and the chattering birds.  

She ran along the hedgerow, her chest burning, her head beginning to clear.  It wasn’t Anders!  It wasn’t her family!  This was the  _Fade_!

She rounded the corner, and skidded to a stop.  There was an archway beneath the green branches, which seemed to her to be moving slowly as if alive.  The birds perched in them, their voices hushed.  In the archway were Merrill and Bethany.  They were insubstantial, flickering in the green light, but their smiles were solid.

“Oh Hawke!” said Merrill delightedly.  “You made it!  I knew you would.  You’re much too clever to let the Fade fool you.”

“Min,” said Bethany, wiping her eyes.  “Sister, you don’t know what it means to see you.”

“Are you… real?” Hawke asked uncertainly.  “You see, nothing else seems to be…”

“You’re right to question, but you’re wrong, it really is us,” said Bethany quickly, squaring her shoulders.  “We haven’t much time.  It’s difficult projecting ourselves into the Fade like this.  But we were trying to lead you to safety.”

“The birds,” said Hawke at once.  “You used to throw millet to them, and grains leftover from harvest.  It’s how I came to like them.  You always put the seed outside my window.”

“I always liked the rare birds,” said Bethany.  “So you insisted on liking the most common one.”

“House sparrow,” said Hawke, grinning.  One landed on her shoulder, chirping.  Bethany gave it a strange look, but Hawke was too grateful, too excited, to notice.  She turned to Merrill.  “And you were the plants, yes?”

“And the red flowers,” said Merrill proudly.  “Red’s always been your favorite color, hasn’t it?”

“Right in one, Merrill.”  The sparrow chirruped again.

“But you can’t stay with us long.  Listen.  We’ll try to keep any demons off of you as long as we can,” said Bethany.  “Varric’s looking for you, sister.  The Inquisitor is going to open a rift, and you’ve got to get to the Hanged Man – quickly!  They’re coming!”

The hedges shuddered, marching away from her, and the birds shrieked, flying towards the hedges.  Green leaves, shredded, were flung into the air; the hedges writhed and rustled, and the remorse demon wailed.  “How do I get there?” Min shouted.  The sparrow fluttered around her frantically.

“It’s the Fade, Hawke!” cried Merrill cheerily, flickering out of view.  Her voice came from somewhere in the hedges, growing fainter.

“It’s about will, sister!” sang Bethany from the flock of birds, and Min closed her eyes, pushed through the archway, and she  _willed_. 


	6. a rain of parchment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Varric attempts to leave signals for Hawke in the Fade, but obstacles from his past keep getting in the way. The Inquisitor steps up.

“Hawke!” Varric shouted, running down the streets of Kirkwall.  He found himself in Hightown, standing outside Hawke’s estate.  He flung open the front door of her home, but the whole place was dim, dark, forgotten.  He shivered, looking into the empty front room.  Where was the fire?  Where were Bodahn, Sandal, Orana?

He frowned.  “Maybe she’s not here,” he said to himself.  He reached into his pocket and pulled out his journal and his fountain pen, and quickly got to work, writing as fast as he could.  Soon a stack of papers fluttered away from him, the ink shimmering and sliding over the pages, a series of missives, letters, warnings.  They floated there in the thick dusty air.  He turned to leave, and walked through the front door into another mansion, just as dimly lit.

He blinked, having been expecting the town square.  “Hello?” he called uncertainly.  “Hawke?”

“Varric,” said his mother in a wan voice.  “I thought you were going to read to me tonight.”

She lay on the bed that had been brought into the front room, close to the fire.  Bottles of potions and tinctures hung heavily in the air beside her.  Scrawled pages covered her rumpled bedspread, the ink long-dried.

She stared hard at him, her braids mussed, her eyes red, her skin yellowed.  He almost thought he could smell the alcohol on her breath again.  It lingered in his memory, a sad and cloying scent.  It puffed out with every word she spoke.  “You never finished your story.”

His hand jerked convulsively around his pen.  Ink spread from the tip onto the pages of his journal, a roiling darkness.  “ _The Mercenary’s Price_. I’m sorry, Mom.”

“I don’t know why you waste your time on that shit, little brother,” said Bartrand.  He sat on the floor beside their mother, smoothing her brittle hair.  “You know that hobby of yours isn’t going to bring in the coin.”  He sighed, gesturing to their mother’s face.  “Look, she’s burning up.  You’d better go get her more medicine.”

“But I didn’t get back in time,” said Varric, hesitating.  His mother closed her eyes, turning her face away from him, holding tight onto Bartrand’s hand.  “I tried to.”  He remembered the long lines at the apothecary that morning, crowds in the street.  “But when I came back, I was too late –”

“I didn’t mind.  I was not afraid,” she said, her voice like dry straw.  “I had my Bartrand with me.  Your brother is such a good man, Varric.  I was always so proud of him.”  She swallowed, a rustling of dead leaves.  “I had my Bartrand with me,” she repeated contentedly.

Bartrand gazed up at him, his eyes red, his expression vacant, confused.  “And I had  _you_  with me, brother.”

“Stop it,” said Varric, shaking his head.  If that wasn’t just like Bartrand!  Annoying, even here.

Bartrand’s red eyes blinked, slowly.  He coughed, and blood flecked his lips.  

Varric tried to ignore the guilt, the regret, suddenly rising up like bile.  He latched onto the story he’d told himself many times, clung to it as hard as he could.  “You were crazy, Bartrand, with no hope of a cure!  It would’ve been cruel to leave you like that.  Even if you deserved it.”

“You can tell yourself that, if you have to.  But you tried to fix the plate you broke.  The glue was everywhere, little brother,” said Bartrand, the blood bubbling out from between his lips in a ghastly flow.  He looked up from the crossbow bolt plunged into his chest, and slurred the words through the dark red liquid.  “The plate was made by the artisans of House –”  He choked, gasping for air.  “House –”

“House Saldras,” supplied Varric, hanging his head.  “Shut up, Bartrand.”  But he didn’t mean it.

“You can still make me proud,” his mother rasped.  “Put your stories away, Varric.  You don’t need to read to me anymore.”

The journal wavered in his hand.  His grip on it loosened, and it slipped closer to the floor.

He whirled suddenly, a noise startling him.  It sounded like it was outside, difficult to hear as it was. He listened for a moment.

Was that a bird?

Haltingly, he tried to remember.  A bird.  Something small, something bright and cheery.   _Sparrow. **Hawke.**_

Varric put the journal and the pen back in his pocket, squaring his shoulders. “I’m not here for you.”

His mother stared at him reproachfully.  Bartrand sank to his knees, blood between his hands.  “It’s your fault,” gurgled Bartrand.

“Yeah.  And I’m fixing it,” said Varric.  He turned around and fled through the front door, a stream of papers fluttering behind him, birdsong in his ears.

 

* * *

 

He squinted at the water lapping against the docks.  The high stone cliffs of Kirkwall’s approach soared above him, and beyond them, a green-lashed sky.  He frowned.  This wasn’t right.  What was he doing down here?  This wasn’t where he had meant to go at all.

Still, though, he could leave a trail.  He wrote pages in what felt like an instant, ripped them loose, set them floating into the night breeze.  He watched them go, a rain of parchment beneath the wrong-set stars.

A small figure stood darkened at the end of the dock, with a silent ship moored beyond them.  Varric watched the figure approach cautiously, slipping his journal and pen back into his pocket.

The figure closed the distance between them, and lowered its hood.  Bianca gazed back at him, her face tired with travel, her smile impossible to hide.

“I’ve missed you,” she murmured.

“You shouldn’t have come,” said Varric.  “It’s too dangerous here.  The guild – your family –”

Bianca waved her hand.  “I figure I can get away with it at least  _once_.  I’ll be away in the morning before anyone can see us.”  She laughed, stepping forward, and took his hands in hers.  They were warm, strong, calloused, the hands of a passionate smith.  “So. You going to show me this Hanged Man you always write about?”

“You realize you and me, we aren’t lucky, right?” asked Varric.  “Something always goes wrong.”

“But this is going to go right,” said Bianca, her eyes glowing with excitement.  “Don’t worry, Varric.  I’ll take care of everything.”

For a moment, he believed her; remembered her mouth on his, her laughter, her brilliance, the weight of her in his arms.  He nearly nodded.

But beneath that, faint and distant as if viewed through a warped glass, there were other memories.  Sharp words in the afterglow, the hiss of arrows, blades in the night.  He remembered fear.  Resentment.  The sad and simple attrition of time and distance.

“This story isn’t yours, Bianca,” said Varric.

The glow in her eyes sharpened, growing fiercer, almost painful for him to look at.  He backed away slowly.  

“You’re  _mine_ , storyteller!” the thing that wore Bianca’s face screeched.  But the scream was cut short by a sudden flurry of birdsong, a clean, bright warble echoing in the night air.  A bird flew around the false Bianca, a swift distraction.  He went to reach for his crossbow –

And he startled awake, lifting up his head.  Cole and Namira stood outside the opening to his tent; blinding sunlight poured in.  Cole looked pleased.  The Inquisitor looked solemn.

“It’s time, Varric,” said Namira.  

 

* * *

 

He dressed quickly, bringing Bianca, extra daggers, a great deal of rope, and a small arsenal of healing potions and treatments.  He didn’t know what she might need.  Good to be prepared, anyway.

It was a simple enough plan.  The mages would join their magic with Namira’s, giving her enough power to open up a rift; it was much harder for her than closing one.  Solas had chosen a site near the Keep where Namira had recently closed a rift.  It was defensible, and it would potentially be easier for her to reopen a small former rift than creating a new one entirely, or trying to reopen the massive rift of Adamant.  Once the rift was opened, most of the inner circle would stay with the mages, ready to fight anything that came through.  

“If there is any remnant of the Nightmare that still remains,” said Namira, “I’m afraid you know what we have to do.”  Her eyes narrowed, and she blinked away sudden tears as they walked together.

“I know.”

“I’ll have to close the rift, whether or not we have you and Hawke back with us.”

“I know, Doodles.”  He raised a hand.  “If there’s any chance she’s there, I owe it to her to bring her back.  But if this goes ass up, and neither of us walks out of there – then I’m just glad you gave her a chance.”  He shrugged.  He felt strangely calm.  

“If you do find her, we’ll have to make sure she’s not a demon or an abomination.  That’s why you aren’t going alone,” said Namira as they came over the crest of the hill, the meeting place coming into view.  “There are a thousand ways for this to go wrong.”

“But there’s a chance for things to go right,” said Varric, and he gave her a grin.  “I’ll take those odds.”

Cassandra strode forward to meet them.  “Are you ready, Varric?”  The Seeker’s face was grim, her shield gleaming beneath the morning sun.

He chuckled.  “Still can’t believe you’re in for this, Seeker.  But I suppose you wouldn’t miss an opportunity to keep an eye on me.”

Cassandra tilted her head slightly, her expression softening.  “After everything, Varric… I must make amends.  If I could have explained to you why we needed Hawke, maybe she would not have fled from us.  Perhaps she would have joined the Inquisition in another way.  And perhaps, none of this would have happened.”  She shook her head, deep in thought.  “I will do all I can to help you.”

For once, Varric didn’t know what to say.  So he nodded, and fell in line beside her, Bianca’s weight heavy at his shoulders.

 

* * *

 

There was very little chit-chat once they had all gathered.  Namira was pale beneath the sunburn already starting on her cheeks; Cullen stood beside her, his hand on his pommel.  Varric couldn’t blame him.  If he’d had a chance to  _fight_  to keep Hawke safe, instead of this dreaming, Fade-crossing bullshit, he’d have taken the fight every time.

“Oi, Varric,” said Sera.  “You’re crazy, yeah?  Just make sure you come back. You can write all sorts of shite in your next story if you do.”  

“I expect a full retelling,” said Vivienne crisply.  “By no accounts are either of you to lose your lives in this mad endeavor.”

“Better you than me,” said Bull.  “This Fade shit is fucking creepy.  Keep your head in there.”

“We will hold the line,” said Blackwall.  “On behalf of the Wardens, I will fight to the last –”

“You guys are acting like this is a suicide mission, or something,” said Varric cheerfully.  Dorian threw back his head and laughed.

“It’s not enough for the Fade-touched dwarf to enter the Fade once, is it?  Funny how the Chant goes on about the hubris of man.  Perhaps it’s the dwarves we should have worried about all along,” said Dorian.  He winked, but then gave Varric a serious look.  “Do be careful.”

“You know full well how dangerous the Fade can be,” began Solas.  “Exhibit great caution.”

“Shadows, secrets, a hope that hurts,” said Cole.  “Love can be a weapon, too.  Or a shield.”

“Love?” asked Sera curiously.  “Like, friend-love?  Or banging bits love?  ‘Cause you never mentioned about the bits –”

Varric waved his hands.  “Ahhh, that’s enough well-wishing,” he said hurriedly.  “Shall we, Doodles?  Seeker?”

Namira nodded.  “I’m ready.  But tell me… “  She dropped her voice to a whisper.  “ _Are_ you two?  With the bits?”

Varric’s ears burned.  Sunburn, probably.  “Yes,” he muttered.  “With the bits.”

“I knew it!” she hissed gleefully, and then her hand crackled and sparked, arcs of green light expanding outward.  Raw magic streamed from the other mages, feeding Namira’s swirl of energy.  For a moment, the green storm hovered in front of them, spitting and humming sparks of emerald and peridot.  Then the air before them  _ripped_ , the Fade shrieking as the rift tore open.

“Now!” Namira cried.  “Dareth shiral!”

Varric and Cassandra turned, gazed on the others, and nodded.  And then they leapt forward through the desert air, through the boiling magic, and into the Fade.


	7. the streets of Kirkwall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kirkwall calls the lovers home.

Min Hawke burst through the hedges, the green leaves disappearing with every step she took.  Her heart hammered painfully in her chest, and Bethany and Merrill’s words rang in her ears.   _Get to the Hanged Man!  Varric’s looking for you!_

She paused for a moment to catch her breath, and looked around.  For a moment, there was only the shifting sky punctuated by formless rocks. Far above her, a bird fluttered between two rocks.  

Water lapped at her feet, and she frowned.  “I’m going to Kirkwall,” she said, and she took a step forward.  “I’m going toKirkwall!”  She began to run, water splashing beneath her boots.  “I’m going  _home_!”

She skidded to a stop.  She was in the entryway of the Hawke estate, its fire crackling merrily.  She whirled around.  Everything looked like she had left it, the family portraits on the wall, the sculpture that Fenris hated, Molossus slumbering on his rug before the fire.  The only things she didn’t recognize were the papers, gauzy and insubstantial, scattered over the floor.  And the sparrow, fluttering between them.

“Thanks for the bird, Bethany,” she murmured.  “Now to see to these papers…”

She bent down to tidy them up.  It wasn’t like Orana or Bodahn to leave something like this around.  Maybe it was Anders’ papers, his manifesto.  The thought filled her with mingled pride, pain, sadness.  The bird fluttered away, landing on her shoulder.

The ink smeared on the pages, staining her hands.  But she could make out words here and there.   _Follow -- find you -- looking._   She shuffled through them.  The handwriting was distorted, but the more words she saw --  _Fade, plan, run, find you, **find you**_  -- the more certain she became.  She flipped over the last page.  

_Love, Varric._

She folded the papers over and stuffed them into the pouch on her belt, warmth suffusing her.  “I hoped it was you,” she whispered, remembering the papers she had found in the tower.  “I don’t know how you’re doing it, but I won’t complain.”

“You’d be well within your rights to do so, if you wished,” said a familiar female voice.  Hawke glanced up and jerked backwards involuntarily.

Min Hawke gazed back at her, looking calm and not at all surprised to see her.  “I thought you would be here soon enough,” she said quietly.  

“Am I really that pretty?” asked Hawke, squinting.  She straightened up.  They were exactly the same height, but the other Hawke looked much more poised.  She was dressed in noble’s clothing, one of the outfits that Mum had had made for her that Hawke had never worn.  Between Mum’s death and the destruction of the Chantry, there had been surprisingly little time for going to parties with other nobles.  Hawke had to admit the outfit was lovely, though; flattering in red and gold, with beautiful detailing around the bodice and wrists.  There was no bird upon her shoulder.

“Of course you are,” said the other Hawke gently.  “I am only who you wish to be.”

“Look, I’d love to stay and chat, but I’ve really got to be going,” said Hawke.  “I’ve an appointment I need to keep.”

“Perhaps it’s a meeting with the Seneschal we need to get to,” said the other Hawke.  “The city could use us, in a troubled time like this.”

“I’m sure that’s lovely and all, but no thanks.  I never wanted the noble life, remember?” said Hawke absently, heading towards the door.  “You’re not the least bit intimidating, actually.”

The other Hawke smiled.  “It isn’t me you ought to worry about,” she said.  “It’s Kirkwall.  Do you know what it’s like, now that you’ve abandoned it?”

Hawke strode towards the door.  “I was there after the explosion,” she said.  “And now I’ve got somewhere else I need to be.  I don’t --”

She opened the door, and the air was thick with the smells of smoke and blood.  She glared at the other Hawke.  “Are you trying to frighten me?  I’ve seen much worse.”

“Go on, then,” said the other Hawke.  “You’re their Champion, after all.  Please, see what the city has become in your absence.  Perhaps they’ll still allow you to help them, even after you’ve left them behind.”

“Shut it,” growled Min, and closed the door behind her.  She took a deep breath of the smoke-filled air.   _The Hanged Man._    All she had to do was find herself there and hopefully, hopefully there’d be a way out.

 

* * *

 

“Here we are,” said Varric, picking himself up off the ground.  “The Fade.  Everything you hoped it would be, Seeker?”

Cassandra gave one of those withering looks that seemed to come so naturally to her.  “You seem surprisingly cheerful for one entering such a terrible place.”  She glared at the floating stones above her, the whirling green sky with the Black City looming in the distance.  “You do understand that if it comes to it, we must sacrifice ourselves.  If there is any chance of a Blight being released again, or possession --”

Varric waved his hand.  “I know all that, Seeker.  I do.  But let me have a bit of hope, all right?  For as long as the Fade will let me keep it, I’d like to hang onto it.”

Cassandra nodded tightly.  “You make a fair point.  Especially given that in order to find what we seek, we must remain focused.  The Hanged Man.”  She took a deep breath.  

“The Hanged Man, or the Fade’s attempt at it, anyway,” said Varric.  “Come on, then.  I’ll buy you a pint.”  And he set off down a rocky path beset by brick and mortar and upside-down windows, praying to nothing in particular that it would take him where he needed to go.

 

* * *

 

Hawke stood in front of the Chantry, or what remained of it.  The Chantry had been exploded outward in layers, the roof hundreds of feet above her in the distance, the walls hanging in chunks fifty feet up, chairs and books and crumbled bits of Andraste’s statues floating in her path.  She sidled past Andraste’s gleaming golden face, sullenly poking out of a narrow cliff wall.  

“This isn’t where I’m supposed to go,” she muttered, trying to remind herself of what she needed to do.  It kept trying to slip away from her as if it was greased, and she struggled mightily to keep it first and foremost in her thoughts.

“Please, serah, can you help?” asked a small boy, tugging at her sleeve.  She reached for a dagger, but his face was so pinched, so hungry that she hesitated.  “Please, serah, if you only you could help me find something to eat…”

“You aren’t a child,” she said.  “You’re a demon.  None of this is really real.”

“But they say you help people,” said the boy.  “They say you’re the Champion of Kirkwall.  I heard the other boys in Darktown say you help.  That’s why I tried to find you.”

“I can’t,” said Hawke.  “I’ve got a meeting to keep.”  She kept walking, the boy trotting along determinedly behind her.  She turned and glared at him.  “Don’t make me make you stop,” she said.

The boy was Orana, sweet and kind-hearted and so deferential it made Hawke uncomfortable.  The young woman gazed up at her.  “Oh, I’m sorry, Mistress, I did not mean to get in the way.  I only wanted to thank you.”

“I --” said Hawke, wrong-footed.  She tried to look around, and for a moment the cobblestone streets became an old slaver’s hideout in a lost temple ruin, the walls blood-red, the air still and forgotten.  Orana knelt in front of her, bowing her head.  “Orana, you don’t need to do that.  I’m your employer, not your master.”

“I know,” said Orana, “and I am so grateful, Mistress Hawke.  You have always been so kind to me.  So helpful.”

“I’m leaving,” she said cautiously.  “I have to get to the Hanged Man.”  The red walls faded, replaced by Kirkwall’s grim black stone.

“Please,” said Keran.

“Please,” said Macha.

“Please,” said Emeric, said Feynriel, said Sketch, said Walter, said Cricket.

Hawke ran through the streets, their pleas following her, their grateful thanks a knife in her heart.

 

* * *

 

_The Hanged Man.  The Hanged Man.  The Hanged Man._

It was a relentless litany in Varric’s head, his heart, his mouth.  He murmured the words under his breath.  Cassandra, marching behind him, had the grace to keep her pessimism down to manageable levels.  If he concentrated, he almost thought he could hear her voice as well, faint and under her breath:  _The Hanged Man.  The Hanged Man._

And slowly, slowly, their wishing began to make it so.

The half-bricked stone began to shift around them.  It was imperceptible, at first; just a feeling that things were a little different.  Then the stone was suddenly no longer brick and mortar, but the familiar obsidian walls of Kirkwall.  They were a little messed up -- floating, disjointed, weird -- but they were Kirkwall nonetheless.  

“It’s working,” said Cassandra cautiously.  “Perhaps we will find Hawke here after all.”

“That’s the plan,” said Varric with a great deal more bravado than he actually felt.  He was here.  Now he just had to get to the Hanged Man, hope that the rendez-vous with the others would work, and hope that Hawke had gotten the message.

It was, he abruptly realized, an incredible risk.

“Varric?”

He turned, and Cassandra wasn’t there.

“Uh… Seeker?”  What the -- she’d been there just behind him, hadn’t she?

But there was only a breezeless chill, and he stared at the soaring jet-black walls beneath a tumultuous sky.

 

* * *

 

Hawke trudged through the docksides, staggering through the lonely quays.  Elf-children followed at her heels, and Fereldan refugees, and widows, and the starving.  Their voices were a cacophony, a rising chorus that begged her for more, and more, and more.

And she wanted to give it to them.  

She collapsed in the center square of the docks district.  There had been a pride demon here, that terrible night; a vicious creature, a mage who had been desperate.  Who had given up.

“I can’t,” she whispered, her voice drowning among the throng.  Her hands, instead of meeting stone, tore against parchment.  She scooped up pages, her knuckles whitening.  Varric’s script melted and flowed over the paper.  “I won’t give up!”  She stuffed the pages into her pockets and clambered back to her feet.  

She turned to the townspeople.  Dozens of them, perhaps hundreds.  The moments of clarity the Fade afforded her were growing fewer and fewer, but this one shone brilliantly.  The people were all spirits, of course; hungry and wanting and hoping that she, a mortal, would be the one to carry them out of the Fade and back into the real world.

She could not fight them.  But she could continue on her goal, even if they dogged her; she could keep striving, keep walking, keep hoping.

Varric’s pages burned in her pockets.  The sparrow flitted around her, its chirps sweet and piercing.  She would hold onto the clarity as long as she could.  She would keep striving -- she would --

 

* * *

 

Lowtown’s streets blurred, sliding in and out of half-reality.  Hawke ran through them, at times scarcely remembering what she ran for, but Bethany’s  _it’s about will, sister!_ rang in her ears.  She willed.  She hoped.  Ink bled in her pockets and a bird sang in her ears and her feet throbbed and her heart quivered.  The world hung shiftless and shifting on a string, and she chased after it, hoping, hoping, reaching --

The Hanged Man.  The front doors stood before her.  Up above, she could see the titular wooden sign, but it looked different than she remembered.  Had it always looked so short, so square?  It struck her as distinctly dwarven in proportion.

She reached out a hand to push in the door.

She did not meet wood.  Instead, flesh met her hand, gripped it hard, nails digging into her skin so hard she wondered they did not rend the bone.

“You would leave them,” the other Hawke said, turning her hand away from the door.  She let Hawke’s hand fall, and the space between them was nothing at all, and miles wide.  “How could you do such a thing?”

“This is not real,” said Min Hawke.  The real Hawke.  Wasn’t she?

“Look at them,” said the other Hawke, her face knit achingly in compassion.  Her pale blue eyes shimmered in the green light as she gazed out at the citizens of Kirkwall.  She laid one hand on her breast.  “You can help them, Hawke.”

“I did what I could,” said Hawke.  “I’ve given Kirkwall everything I have to give.”  Mum’s face, her ruined eyes; Bethany’s grey skin --

“They need their Champion,” said Hawke.  “Their protector.  They’ve been without you for years.”

“I fled to save them.  An Exalted March was coming,” said Hawke.  “But if the -- the ‘instigators’ - had fled the city, then the city would be safe, wouldn’t it --”

“Please, serah Hawke,” said the elf-girl, her green eyes wide.

“We need you, Hawke,” said Aveline, her face grim, her voice hopeful.

“Who else would stand against the wicked, Hawke?” asked Fenris.

“You’re what they need, Hawke.  Better than I could be,” said Isabela.

“They need you, Hawke,” said Hawke.  She took Hawke’s hands in her own, folded her thumbs over them, embraced them.  “And you can take care of them.  I’ll help you.  I’ll take care of what awaits in the Hanged Man.  You stay with them.  Your people need you.”

Tears sprang in her eyes, streamed down her cheeks.  She didn’t want any other Kirkwaller hungry, poor, afraid.  She’d been all those things.  She glanced back at the others, their eager hopeful faces, their need, their raw, pulsing appetite.

She opened her mouth.


	8. the hanged man, reversed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hawke and Varric converge on the Hanged Man, and the only chance for Hawke to escape the Fade.

“Will you stay, Champion?  Will you care for your people?” asked Hawke.

Hawke swallowed, looking back at herself.  The throng of Kirkwall clamored behind her.  She remembered sun and wind, birds in the trees, a world beyond this place.  She opened her mouth.

“This is not Kirkwall,” she said.  “This is not real.  I cannot be their Champion.”

The other Hawke glared at her, her dark brows and pink mouth forming a bitter scowl.  “You have chosen poorly, Champion,” she said.  And suddenly the other woman was no longer a woman, but instead her arms were bulging, her legs lengthening, her head widening to a pair of horns.

“I will not let you pass, Hawke,” said the Arishok.

Hawke swallowed, fear uncoiling within her; her side ached from the old scar.  She was twenty-nine again, certain that ruin and bloodshed would happen, but determined to try to stop it regardless.  Kirkwall needed her, and she spilled her blood for her city, yes, nearly dying in the doing.

But now she was seven years older, seven years wiser, and she needed herself.  Her hands tightened on her daggers.  

“I will not let you live,” said Hawke, and the battle was joined.

It was a brutal thing, just as vicious now as she remembered it then.  She ran, sidestepped, struck.  They were glancing blows despite the weight she’d thrown behind them, and the Arishok countered with a swing of his massive arm and a thrust of his sword.  She tried to dodge, tried to evade, her feet slipping into familiar footwork patterns, her daggers flashing in the off light.  She groaned as the sword’s edge sliced her side, a deep and searing tear that made her gasp.  She had to be better.

The Arishok’s fighting was cold, crisp, clinical.  He did not hate her.  He never had.  Yet she was  _bas_ , and she needed to be removed.  That was perhaps the scariest thing of all.

Sidestep, sidestep.  Blood slick in her armor, the wound from the Nightmare reopened, and she panted with the exertion, the fear.  The Arishok let out a triumphant shout and nearly buried his axe in her shoulder.  She dodged sideways as he wrestled with the axe, trapped now in the door of the Hanged Man, and she buried her daggers in his back, just below his shoulder blades.  She hissed with the effort of it, hoping it had been enough to tear into his chest and puncture a lung –

She was on the ground, her head ringing from where the Arishok had elbowed her in the face with as much force as a full punch.  Blood poured out of her mouth, and she choked with it.  One hand curled weakly around a dagger’s hilt, the other lay empty, its dagger still deep in the Arishok’s back.

The Arishok loomed over her.  “You still can choose correctly, Hawke.”

She struggled to raise her head.  Her vision swam, doubled and dizzy.  Was that birdsong in her ears?   _Got to have a trick up the sleeve.  There’s got to be something –_

She fumbled at her pockets.  And she found the trick. She smiled through the taste of blood.

“Fuck you,” said Hawke, and she flung Varric’s letters into the Arishok’s face.

The papers were  _alive_.  There was no better way to describe it; they swooped and dodged, rolled and blinded, fluttered madly around the Arishok.  He couldn’t see.  He tried to swat the pages away, but they were too flimsy, too fast, to grasp; he waved his weapons, but they swarmed around him, the pages’ ruffling so loud it filled her ears.  

She saw her opening.  She dragged herself upright against the wall of the Hanged Man, and she leapt, her single blade poised.

It slid through the air, humming.  It slid through paper, rustling like a thumb finding a place in a good book.  It slid through the Arishok’s throat like an afterthought.  Light boiled out of the corpse, and a creature she had never seen before slithered to the ground, already fading away in death.  It was a shapeless, hideous fleshy thing, with as many limbs as a spider, all of them twitching as if they wanted to tangle themselves in everything they could find.  She watched it vanish, and as it left, a powerful ache flooded her chest.  “Remorse,” she whispered.

The Kirkwallers murmured, and she realized she had forgotten they were still there.  The ones nearest stared at her with red eyes.

“Oh, shit,” she said.  She picked up the dagger that had fallen to the ground and ran into the Hanged Man, blood squelching in her boots, and she slammed the door.

 

* * *

 

Varric passed through hazy Kirkwall streets, Bianca in his arms, ready to use.  Cassandra was nowhere to be found.  He hoped a demon hadn’t somehow picked the Seeker off – it would have to be one hell of a demon.  Maybe she’d seen a threat that needed dealing with immediately, before she could warn him.  Maybe she’d meet him at the Hanged Man.

He struggled again to keep it in mind.  It was easier than it had been when he had been asleep, but still difficult.  He wondered if Namira’s influence, her Mark, had kept the path clear and allowed the party to keep their focus.  It sure felt harder now on his own.  He made a note to ask Solas about it if he returned.

**When.**  When, not if.  He took a deep breath.  _It’s about will, isn’t it?  So what do you will?_

But  _will_ was too easy to turn to  _want_.  His room at the Hanged Man, so familiar he ached to see it.  He stepped inside, the bed and chairs and table just the same as he’d left them.  Damn, it felt good to be back.  

She sat on the edge of his bed, naked except for his jacket folded around her.  Her dark hair was sleek, shining in the lamplight; the warm light made her dark skin almost shimmer.  She was beautiful.  She was luminous.  She was everything.

“Finally,” Hawke whispered, leaning forward.  He moved towards her slowly, his feet dragging on the wooden floor.  His boots scraped with every step.

She reached out, taking his hands, pulling him on top of her.  He’d lost his clothes, too, and her skin was warm against his, his jacket laying forgotten beneath her back.  

“Varric,” she gasped, breath soft against his ear, her hands gently roaming over his shoulders, sliding down his back.  She kissed him, her hips rising to meet his; but he did not thrust, he did not enter her despite the way she arched.  

All he could do was hold her; all he could do was bury his face in the crook of her neck.  This wasn’t real.  This wasn’t  _her_.  They’d never been together like this in Kirkwall.  He’d never seen her in his jacket.  The real Min had more scars, scars he’d only discovered recently.

“I wish it was you,” he said, and pressed a kiss to her lips, tears in his eyes.  

“Varric?”

He held her closer.  Tried to memorize the feel of her in his arms.  “Sorry,” he breathed.  “But you’re not my Sparrow.”

The vision dissolved; a dizzying slide of form and furniture, light and shadow, her heartbroken expression.  And then he was under the Fadelight once again, and he shifted in his jacket, the weight of it on his shoulders so much heavier than before.  

He picked up Bianca and he stared at the bedroom door.  He opened it, and like he had a hundred, a thousand, times, he went downstairs.

 

* * *

 

Hawke clapped a hand to her side, trying to staunch the bleeding.  She gazed blearily out at the main room of the Hanged Man, her vision still half-blurred from the blow from the false Arishok.  Surely that had to account for what she saw, right?  What else could explain the sight of dozens of Varrics, getting up from their tables, pints in hand, easy grins on their faces?

“Hawke!  Good of you to join me,” said a Varric at her side.  This one looked younger than he should; his hair hadn’t started to grey yet at the temples, and the red scar on his nose looked redder than ever.  

“Ahh, don’t listen to that joker,” said another Varric.  “Don’t worry, I won’t hold it against you.  Come on and have a pint.”  His hair was pulled all the way back in a ponytail, instead of half-falling down around his ears.  She frowned.

“Varric?” she called, shoving past the two imposters at her side.  “Varric?”

“But I’m right here,” said a third Varric.  He gave her a roguish wink.  “Settle in, we’ll get a game of Wicked Grace going.”  He made as if to toast her with a glass of red wine.  Varric hated red wine.  He preferred the occasional ale, or very, very rarely, whisky.

“Varric!” she shouted, her voice going hoarse at the end.  Her face and her side throbbed.  She tripped more than once over the uneven wooden floor.  Some of the boards at the edge of the room were floating vertically above the tables.  Varrics followed her with every step, curious, cheerful, content.

“I’m here for you, Hawke,” said Varric, holding his hand out.  She looked at him suspiciously, but his face looked right.  “Tell me everything.”

She took his hand hesitantly.  “I’m so tired,” she said.  “And I can’t sleep.  Not really.  I just want to go home.”

His hand was soft, so soft.  “You are home, Hawke.”

She stiffened.  Where were his callouses?  Years of Bianca and fountain pens should have left his hands marked.  She tried to pull her hand away, but Varric’s soft, full grip tightened on her.

“You’re mine,” he said, and there was a greed in his eyes that sickened her.

“Shove it,” she muttered, and kicked him, hard.  He staggered and dropped her hand, and she dove through a cluster of more Varrics, their jokes ringing in her ears, their voices raised in a chorus of  _Hawke, Hawke, Hawke!_

She stumbled to a free corner of the bar, leaning hard against the wall.  Her fingers brushed her pocket, pulled out one last paper.  It was wet with ink, or blood, or both.  She wasn’t sure.  But she knew it was Varric’s, the real Varric’s, and she gripped it like a talisman.

“Varric?” she called desperately.

“Hawke?   _Hawke_!”

The other Varrics were muscled aside by a Varric who looked real. Just like the others had, but his face was different – he stared at her as if she was the sun, his gaze shining, his eyes hopeful, a disbelieving half-smile creasing his face.  He looked beautiful, like that.  And on his shoulder, tan and white and brown, there perched a sparrow.

“Hawke?  Is that you?” he whispered.  He reached out and touched the parchment crumpled in her hands.  “You… you got my letters?”

She flung her arms around him, overwhelmed, suddenly sobbing.  Fuck her throbbing head, fuck the wound in her side, fuck the mind games of the Fade.  She wasn’t  _alone_.  She fell to her knees and buried her face in his shoulder, and his arms around her were strong.  Strong, shaking,  _real_.

“Varric, it’s really you,” she wept.  “How did you –”

“My sparrow,” he breathed, his lips pressed against her ear.  “Maker’s breath, Hawke.  I almost lost you.”

A throat cleared behind them, and Hawke raised her head.  Seeker Pentaghast stood there, blood sprayed on her shield and armor, her face grim.  “And we could lose all of us.  We must hurry, Varric.”  She focused, a dim light shining around her.  Some Seeker power, Hawke guessed.  “I cannot detect the signs of possession.  Let us pray that I am right.”

“Where did you go?” demanded Varric.  “I looked back and you were gone.”

Cassandra’s mouth quirked, and she averted her eyes.  “I – I thought I saw my brother.  I was fooled.”  She shook her head.  “The problem has been rectified.”

Varric looked at her for a moment, then nodded.  “Don’t worry about it, Seeker.  You’re not the only one to see shit that… Look.  This place can really mess you up.”

“You’re telling me,” said Hawke woozily.  Her head really was bothering her.  She gripped Varric hard, and he brushed the hair away from her face carefully.

“Shit!  What happened?”

“The Arishok happened,” she muttered.  “ _Again_.”

“Words I never wanted to hear,” said Varric.  “Come on, Hawke.  We’ve gotta get out of here.  We might have reinforcements coming, but we can’t wait.  I don’t think they’re going to be happy we’re leaving.”

Hawke squinted.  Swimming around them, she could see a mixture of Varrics and Hawkes roaming the Hanged Man.  Some of them looked indistinguishable from the real thing, but others looked strange, and some appeared to be caught halfway between one or the other.  She wasn’t sure what they were: maybe wisps that had felt their longing and tried to become what they sought. But their faces, formerly excited to see her, were becoming sullen.

She got to her feet with Varric’s help.  “So now what?”

“Now we do whatever we need to in order to return to the Inquisitor,” said Cassandra.  

“I think you want to stay awhile,” said a false Varric, his smile cold and cruel.

“Pull up a chair!” a Hawke agreed, her eyes flashing red.  

Cassandra drew her blade just in time to decapitate the Varric that had tried to heft a false Bianca to his side.  The other Hawkes and Varrics howled, shimmering, fading, coalescing into creatures of gold and red light that still bore their faces.  

“Make for the door!” Varric shouted.  “Focus on getting back!”  Bianca hummed in his arms, sending arrow after arrow into the wisp-like creatures.

Cassandra was a whirlwind of sword and shield, felling creatures with a ferocity that left Hawke grateful.  She struggled with her daggers.  Another Hawke nearly gutted her, and it was only a lucky strike that left the real Hawke still standing.  Varric loaded more arrows into Bianca, pushing through the horde of creatures to the door.  

But there were so many.  Even as many of them winked out of existence, new ones seemed to appear, their faces anguished, begging, hungry.  Hawke slit the throat of a Varric wisp, biting back tears.   _It can’t end this way!  Not after everything!_

There was a sudden flash.  A fount of wild magic, blue and white and clean, flooded the room.  The creatures moaned with one voice, and fell back, gibbering and blinded.  

“Hawke.  Varric,” said Justice, standing calmly before them.  “You have very little time.”

Hawke stared at the spirit with mingled relief and sorrow.  She hadn’t seen Anders since –  “We know,” she gasped.  “Help us.”

“We will all help you,” said Justice, his eyes kind in Anders’ face.  “The others are coming.”

“The others?” Hawke asked slowly.

Birdsong loud and ringing in the air.  Vines twined round the chairs and tables, thorns sprouting out of them.  Gossamer versions of her dearest friends stepped from darkness into the light, gauzy and shimmering but there regardless.  

“We will cover you, sister,” said Bethany proudly.  Merrill stood beside her, her eyes flashing.  And – faint and ghostlike, but just as determined – Fenris, Aveline, Isabela, all of them dangerous, all of them brilliant.

“How –” she began.

“Maker’s breath, Hawke!” groaned Aveline.  “Now is not the time!  Move your ass!”  She hefted her sword and shield.  

“I would suggest listening to her,” said Fenris.  “Still, it is good to see you both.”  Green light glinted off his blade.

“Drinks at the real Hanged Man once you get out of here?” asked Isabela cheerfully.

“You really ought to be running now,” said Merrill.  “Ooh - be careful!  Don’t worry, we’ll take care of things here!”

They fell upon the false Hawkes and Varrics viciously, weapons ringing loudly, their enemies shrieking as they disappeared.  Varric, Hawke and Cassandra ran for the door of the Hanged Man, passing Justice as they fled.  Hawke turned to him.  

“Tell Anders – tell Anders thank you,” she said.  Justice nodded in assent, and she hurried past him.  Varric laid his hands on the door, and he pushed it open.

 

* * *

 

They were going to make it.  His heart beat madly in his chest.  They were really going to make it.  

Demons screamed behind them, but the Kirkwall crew screamed louder, their shouts victorious.  The door from the Hanged Man hadn’t opened on Kirkwall, but on formless rock and cliff, and in the distance they could see the swirling green sparks of Namira’s rift in the Fade.  They were nearly there!  

Cassandra led the way, her shield flashing.  Hawke followed her, limping but moving as quickly as she could, and Varric followed behind, Bianca at the ready.  The shrieks of battle became quieter as they ran, their footsteps crunching over the rock.  They fled past bits of castles and mountains, cities and ruins; they ran with their breaths ragged in their ears, and a sparrow fluttered overhead.  

The rift yawned before them, and Varric could see through it now, Namira’s face small and bright at the other end, Cullen beside her, the others ready to fight.  But Hawke was flagging, staggering on the slick stones, clutching her side.  She dropped her daggers, and suddenly she collapsed, tumbling to the ground.

“Hawke!” he cried.  He raced beside her, shouldering Bianca, and fell to his knees.  “No, no, come on, we’re almost home –”

She blinked up at him, her eyes unfocused, her face pale.  She raised a trembling, blood-soaked hand from her side.  “I guess you can still bleed here,” she whispered.  

“We’ve got healers, as long as we can get you out.  Come on,” he said, refusing to allow the panic to reach his voice.  Had to keep it together.  “You’re gonna be fine, Hawke.”  He scooped her up into his arms and groaned, getting to his feet.  She was heavy, but he could manage.  She leaned against him, breathing hard.

The sparrow let out a piercing trill.  At the same time, Cassandra – who had nearly reached the rift – bellowed, “Behind you!”

Varric turned, pivoting with Hawke in his arms so that he could see.   _Shit._  Every spirit in the place looked like it was bearing down on them.  The others must have been overrun and lost their connection to the Fade.  For an agonizing second, he didn’t know what to do – stand and fight? Or run and hope that he was fast enough?

Hawke made the decision for him.  “Varric,” she said through gritted teeth.  “Get me the  _fuck_ out of here.”

He ran, clutching her as tightly as he could, ignoring the burning in his legs and chest.  Cassandra ahead of him fought off several demons at once, keeping them at bay.  The rift was so close!  And Hawke – she held onto him, hard, with one hand digging into his shoulder.

She stared behind them.  Even out of the corner of his eye he could see the determination in her face.  She raised her free arm and the sparrow landed on her wrist. She closed her hand.  

The sparrow vanished.  A fierce, golden light spilled from her fist, pulsing and raw, and she  _flung_  it behind them.  For an instant, he swore he saw daggers of pure light, flying impossibly fast and true – but that couldn’t be right –

The demons behind them wailed.  “Now!” Cassandra screamed, waving them forward into the rift –

 

* * *

 

Blinding green light.  A rushing of wind.  The smell and feel of sand, gritty and everywhere; the glare of the sun; and Hawke against him on the ground, still held tight in his arms, her head on his shoulder.

The rift roared as it closed behind them, and Cassandra sheathed her sword.  “It is done,” she said to Namira.  “I do not know how we all survived, but it is done.”  She nodded to Vivienne and Solas.  “She is in need of healing.”

Hawke raised her head, blinking sleepily at Varric.  “Ah,” she said.  “Maybe now I can finally get a good night’s sleep.”

Varric couldn’t get any words out.  He just laughed, and laughed, and kissed her as hard as he could.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really had fun creatively with this chapter. I hope that comes through!


	9. every good tale deserves an epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The aftermath of the time spent in the Fade, and new adventures.

Varric wiped the sweat from his brow, trying not to smudge the ink on the half-written letter before him.  It was the fifth such letter he’d written this morning.  Good news had to be shared, even if it meant writing letters in the stifling desert heat.

He took a break to let the ink finish drying, leaning back in the rickety wooden chair.  He was grateful for a lot of things this morning, but right this second, he was grateful to be in a room at Griffon Wing Keep instead of a cramped tent.  This room was big enough for a camp bed, and it was there his gaze kept drifting to where Min Hawke’s dark hair lay tumbled over the pillow as she slept.

Cassandra, Vivienne, Solas had all assured him that no demons had followed them out of the Fade, and nothing evil had hitched a ride back with any of them.  Hawke was still, improbably, amazingly, Hawke.

She wasn’t unmarked by her time in the Fade, of course.  There were two nasty wounds on her side, the knock to her head from the false Arishok, signs of dehydration.  And there was the other thing… Varric wasn’t sure how she was going to take the news of  _that_  development.  He sighed.  She was Hawke.  She would figure it out.

He leaned forward, the pen familiar within his grip, and he finished the letter.  When it was done he blew on the ink until it dried and folded it up carefully.

“Writing more letters, then?” asked Hawke.

He nearly fell over in his haste, trying to get out of the chair.  Maker’s breath, but she looked  _wonderful_ – her hair a tousled mess, a healing bruise on her forehead, her lips cracked.  

She smiled, radiant.

He sat at the front of the flimsy camp bed beside her, hoping it would bear both of their weights without buckling.  “You scared the shit out of me.”  He brushed her hair back out of her eyes, resting his hand against her cheek.

“ _I_ scared you _?_   You do realize where I’ve just been, don’t you?  If anyone’s to be scared, it’s me,” said Hawke, laying her hand on his.  Her eyes were bright.  “Varric, I – thank you.  Thank you for everything.  For finding me.”

He waved his other hand at her.  “This is just a suggestion, but maybe you should never do that again,” said Varric.  “You really do have the worst luck, don’t you, Sparrow?”

She groaned.  “Oh, you don’t even know the half of it.”

He was quiet for a moment, and she closed her eyes.  “If you need to talk about it…”

“Not yet,” she murmured.  “There was so much – all of my deepest fears, wishes, longings.  The Fade was never for people like us, Varric.  At least you’ll never have to go again, at any rate.”

Varric nibbled at the corner of his lip.  “Um… about that.”

“Oh?”

“How do you think I sent you those letters?”

She lifted her head, her pale blue eyes clear, and he pulled his hand back.  “I have no idea.  I couldn’t figure it out.  They helped me wonderfully, but I couldn’t understand why they were there.”

“Turns out that unless you’re already someone Fade-adjacent, like a mage or a Seeker, being in the Fade… it’ll do things to you.”  He shrugged.  “I wrote those letters in my dreams.  Something about wanting to find you more than anything else – ahh, you get the idea.”

Hawke raised her eyebrows, then winced when the action made the bruise on her forehead wrinkle.  “A dwarf who can dream!  What will they come up with next?  Is it permanent?”

“It didn’t seem to be the first time around, but Solas gave me the once-over after we came back out with you,” said Varric.  “Going into the raw Fade a second time… yeah, he thinks it’s permanent.”

Hawke’s mouth fell open.  “Oh, Varric.  I hope they aren’t bad ones, at any rate.”

“They’ll be better now, I think.”  He leaned down, kissing the unbruised part of her temple.  She hummed contentedly.

He studied her face, worn with new lines beneath her eyes, evidence of scars she would always carry.  It wasn’t fair.  She’d already given so much.  She shouldn’t have had to go through this alone.  

She gave him a rueful smile.  “Perhaps your dreams will help you write new stories.  I hear human authors use their dreams for inspiration all the time.”  She paused for a moment, considering.  “Speaking of dreams…”  She frowned.  “Mine seem different.  Richer.  Wider, somehow.  I don’t know how to describe it.”

Varric hesitated.  “Remember how I said being in the Fade’ll do stuff to you?”

Hawke’s eyes widened.  “Varric…”

“Well… um…”

“Varric…”

But she saved him from having to explain things.  The bedspread caught fire under her fists.

“What the –” she shrieked, smacking the flames out with her hands and wads of blanket.  Thankfully, the flames smothered before Varric had a chance to try and help.  “Are you serious?”

Varric shrugged uneasily.  “Turns out that being in the Fade can make the right person… develop magic.  So, uh.  Congratulations.”

Hawke just stared at him for a few moments, smoke black and gauzy in the air beside her, the smell of the scorched bedspread acrid on the air.  “Well,” she said thoughtfully, pursing her lips.  “Shit.”

***

_Dearest Bethany,_

_I’m here.  I’m alive.  I’m going to be all right._

_Words can never be enough to thank you for what you did for me, for how you and Varric brought the others to help me.  I will never, ever forget it._

_Things are broken with the Wardens.  Warden Clarel was tricked by Corypheus and his worm Erimond; the Wardens were forced into killing each other with blood magic.  The Inquisitor is going to execute this Erimond bastard when they return to Skyhold, and I’m glad.  It was vicious.  I’m so grateful Aveline got you away from them._

_Warden Alistair has gone to Weisshaupt to sort it out, and I think the Wardens will recover in the end.  I expect they’ll want to see you again in time.  But I am hoping you can stay near Kirkwall a little longer._

_There’s so much to tell you, Bethany.  I made it out of the Fade, thanks to you and Merrill and the others.  But I guess being there in the flesh, for such a long time – it changes you._

_The mages here tell me I’m not possessed, and I’m still me.  But whatever is in me of Dad, the Fade has brought it out._

_I have magic now.  I’m… a mage._

_Not a powerful one, mind.  They were quite clear on that.  I’ll never be able to summon half the firestorms or the blizzards you were always so adept at.  But there are little things I can do… and there are the dreams.  They’re different now, full of birdsong and soft voices, and a green light that never fades._

_I’m going to need a teacher, Bethany.  Will you help me?  Like Dad helped you?_

_Varric is coming back with me, just enough for me to get settled before he returns to the Inquisition.  He’s got to see this Corypheus business through.  I would stay and fight with him, but I need – I need to see Kirkwall.  And I want to see it again with you._

_Expect me at the new moon, sister.  I love you dearly._

_Your sister, forever and always,_

_Min_

_PS: Have I mentioned that Varric and I have fallen in love?  Because we have.  I’m not joking, either.  And I’ll have all the details for you when I arrive, no matter how red Varric’s ears get.  (If you have the right topic of conversation, he actually blushes quite easily, it’s adorable.)_

_PPS: I mean it, Bethany.  We really are in love.  No joking, I promise._

_PPPS:  (Yes, we’ve slept together, and IT’S AMAZING, I really do mean it, ALL THE DETAILS when I come home!)_

***

The light of the twin moons was pale and wan on the desert sand.  Hawke rubbed her eyes.  It was a beastly early hour, and cold as anything.  Still, though, she knew it was better than trying to travel beneath the fierceness of the sun.  Insects buzzed in the dark, their night-chorus layered and lush.

“It’s a long ways back to Kirkwall,” she said.

Varric nodded.  “Don’t I know it.”  He adjusted Bianca on his back, making sure she sat snugly with his pack.  

“You don’t have to come, if you don’t want to.  I’ll be all right.”

“I know,” he said.  “You survived the Fade, didn’t you?  But I’d miss you too damn much.”

“You’re terribly sentimental.”

“What can I say, Hawke?  You bring out the best in me,” said Varric.  And he reached out, folding her hand within his own, and she twined his fingers with his beneath the moonlight.  

“It’s only because I love you.”

“Now who’s sentimental?” he asked, his voice a husky laugh.  She bent and kissed him, hard, until they both burned for breath.  She pulled away reluctantly, and only because she knew the dawn would soon be coming.

She put one boot down into the sand, then the other, in a familiar dance.  Varric’s steps beside her felt nearly as familiar as her own.  She walked into the dark beneath the pale white moons, beneath the stars, and she thought of home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's finally finished! I have finally atoned for leaving Min Hawke in the Fade on my very first DA:I playthrough, and also satisfied my deep and burning desire for Hawke to fall in love with Varric. This is not the end for my stories about these two, but it's such a relief to have this incredibly important part of their relationship finally completed. I hope you all enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing about it!
> 
> A few notes:  
> \- Min's sparrow in the Fade? She thought it was Bethany's. It was actually her latent magic becoming activated and growing in the Fade, which was why the sparrow became more powerful as the final chapters finished. Min only half-realized it at the end of Chapter 8, but she had assumed she was imagining it, or that using the sparrow to make weapons was something limited to the Fade alone.  
> \- Min's minor mage skills will be easy to manage in some ways, difficult in others. Her fighting style's going to be awesomely augmented with barriers and spirit blades, but nights will get more difficult, as they will for Varric.  
> \- I really want to do some time in Kirkwall with Min and Bethany (and Merrill and perhaps even Anders), and training to use her magic as well as becoming reacquainted with the others.  
> \- Min will likely visit Skyhold multiple times during the remainder of the Inquisition years.  
> \- Where she and Varric will have obnoxiously loud sexytimes now that the cat is out of the bag.  
> \- Varric does learn to use dreams for inspiration. Some of those books do poorly, being strange and out of the normal realm of his work, but one series inspires an entirely new genre, something one reviewer describes as "scientific fiction."

**Author's Note:**

> Me vs. Hawke in the Fade... let's do this thing.


End file.
